


Double Cross

by dawn_watcher



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Kiss, Hair Washing, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Masturbation, Mild Language, Military Backstory, Military Uniforms, Mind Manipulation, Mutual Masturbation, Nice Armitage Hux, Orgasm Denial, Past Torture, Post-World War I, Prompt Fic, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Revolutionaries, Rey Kenobi, Reysexual Ben, Sexual Content, Skinny Dipping, Slow Burn, Smut, Submarines, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virgin Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2020-09-19 11:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawn_watcher/pseuds/dawn_watcher
Summary: After the First World War, Kylo Ren became head doctor of the Odysseus Project, a secret military operation designed to test and weaponize gifted individuals.Although he carries dangerous powers himself, he pushes through his work, until their crew receive their most troubling subject yet - a woman with telepathic abilities.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of historical inaccuracies in this one, but I did my best with military/submarine/WWI history. The story starts in 1920's Syria/Palestine, and I'm still learning where it will go from here! I hope it's enjoyable! Will update later with end notes :)

1920: Niima Outpost, 

Rays of sunlight beat down mercilessly on the wide cobbled streets of Niima, a maze of buildings the color of sand rise tall above them. The salt of sweat lingers beneath the collar of his tan jacket, dampening the seamless edges of his uniform. Like a silver ghost, their automobile drifts through the sun struck city of dust and gold, witness to its emptiness, the spin of tires on gravel the only sound around them. 

“This one is apparently quite powerful - Snoke must believe you’re ready to handle someone with a similar aptitude to you.” Armitage Hux mumbled sarcastically. He crossed his legs in the passenger seat, clothed head to toe in dark naval officer’s suit in spite of the heat. Kylo knew he said that to agitate him, but Hux was the only one he could speak to regarding his own abilities. 

“I am not like them,” he murmured, turning the wheel to bend into the regional director’s estate. Although he was well distracted by driving the vehicle, his jaw still clenched distastefully at Hux’s comparison. The subject they were to pick up would be just like the others. Scared, sheltering some minor psychological ability or physical agility, mind and soul devoid of purpose until the First Order crafted one for them. He was not like them.

They sit in silence for the remaining five minutes. It’s not until they approach the tall manor’s gates that they can see another soul, as two British soldiers narrow their gazes from beneath its broad, ornate structure. Over their shoulders are slung leather straps to hold guns. From the driver’s seat, Kylo offers the guard their documents. 

“Must be some hell to put up with if they called us in to get him.” Hux gruffs, unimpressed with the security guards as they’re ushered in. Kylo rolls his shoulders, sore from the hour drive from the port, offering no comment in return. Orders were orders, and their orders were to take the asset with them. What someone from this kind of backwater had to do with them and their work, he had no idea. He did however, challenge Snoke’s command before they had docked. Theirs was a covert operation, their mission had no room for anyone useless.

In addition to that, retrieving prisoners of war was not a part of the job description. They were biologists, physicists, engineers, equipped to observe and invent, not to intervene. Snoke had reassured him, however, that this was worth the change in plans. 

Eleanor Phasma greeted them unceremoniously from the steps of the embassy manor, donning a deep army-green skirt suit that complemented her cold and polished demeanor. 

Although Kylo had only met her twice before, her icy strength imposed order around her; backs were straightened, breaths were held cautiously, and even under the middle eastern sun, some felt cold still - not relieving but sinister.

“Admiral Hux, Doctor Ren, a pleasure to see you both again.” Phasma folded her hands together, her stance without courtesy or pleasance or sarcasm, merely routine. “If you’ll come right this way -” 

Obliging her, they removed their hats and welcomed the shade as they drifted into the cool, tiled interior of the home. Ceiling fans wafted the air high above their heads in the entryway and they followed the formal click of Phasma’s shoes. In pace with her long authoritarian strides, a soldier handed her a manila folder, which she plucked unceremoniously, flipping through the typed and handwritten files. “The subject,” she drones, “is an interesting one indeed; she should make a great addition to the freak show you have running at Odysseus.” Kylo tenses slightly as her words reach him, but Hux halts entirely.

“S_he?” _Phasma turns to meet the Admiral’s astonishment with a level glare, “how come we weren’t told this? We don’t have the capacity for another female.” Kylo readjust his hold on the hat under his arm. Although Hux was right, it would be of no use to challenge Phasma in her own territory, under Snoke’s orders nonetheless. 

Aware of this as well, Phasma paid his outburst no further heed as she resumed their path, “This one is better suited for solitary keeping,” she added flippantly. Kylo gritted his teeth. It was normal for the subjects to be… unsociable at first. People of various abilities and sensitivities who they gathered in various mandates and colonies. Of course, this was all in the interest of bettering their intelligence operation before another war started. The Great War would not be the last. However, with time Kylo would figure out each subject and find ways to help them adjust to the group cabins of the Odysseus. It was unfit to keep them alone for long periods of time. 

Reaching a hidden wing of the house, where stairs descend, Kylo and Hux stoop to follow under the steady decline of the sand stone. With an officious set of silver keys, Phasma opened several doors into different chambers before they reached the holding cells. When she turns the final key, however, she looks to Ren and Hux.

“Do not underestimate this one.” She says firmly. “You’re not to look at her eyes whatsoever.” 

Hux scoffs lightly under his breath. Kylo merely casts a curious glance. “Perhaps you’re to give that to us before we change her over,” he said, eyes flitting to the manilla folder in her hand. The subject’s case file. 

For the first time in their encounter, a glimmer of weakness or worry flashed in Phasma’s eyes as she looked to Kylo’s hands. Hux, detecting her hesitance, offered his gloved hand as he stood between them. The moment was gone, and steel exterior again, Phasma handed the folder to Hux. 

Taking it from him, Kylo opened it to examine the files. 

Classified 

Kenobi, Rey. 

He skims over what little details there are: an apparent lack of parentage or relations, records of her circumstances when Phasma’s unit found and lost her; he stops when he finds what he’s looking for. 

Aptitude: telepathy; subsets communication, perception, and persuasion. Scope of power untested. 

Closing the folder, Kylo returns it to Hux, who stows it away in his briefcase. He also hands over his weapon. If she has persuasive abilities, he won’t give her the chance to arm herself. As for him, were she to lay a hand on him, his powers would be resistance enough. “Would you mind?” he asks Phasma quietly. Silently, she steps aside, letting him turn the door handle to enter. 

Within the prison chamber, light floods in through a single beam from the stone cutout window high on the wall. Behind it, obstructed by the outpouring of light, Kylo can barely decipher her seated frame. 

She breathes gently as if asleep, or perhaps unaware of his entry through the quiet door. He cannot see her face, but Kylo can outline the steady rise and fall of her shoulders facing away from him. As he steps away from the doorway towards her, she seems to detect his presence and stiffens. 

Two guards brushed past the space to Kylo’s left, one set to undoing the chains that fastened the woman’s hands behind her back. The other knelt beside her, fingers moving to tie a black blindfold over her eyes. He exchanges a nod with the chain-guard, who lifts the woman to her feet, hands now bound before her. 

She stumbles from the change in gravity, but with a sharp jut of her elbow she pushes away the hands of the guards. Then she steps into the light, the light seeming to shine through and from her. Striding forward steadily, however, the light falls away as she enters the shadows again, mere paces away from him. 

She doesn’t know yet that their proximity is dangerous, in addition to that she’s been blindfolded, Kylo thinks, stepping a bit to the side. It wouldn’t do to have an incident in their first five minutes. Her chin turns towards him, alert to his sudden shift, but he watches on. 

The woman - Rey it would seem, purses her lips, the slightest hue of a desert rose. Her golden skin is splashed with freckles. Soft angles and composure arrange her face into a neutral expression. Her slender frame and crown of tangled chestnut hair suggested her youth, as well as a wild spirit. She could not be more than nineteen, but the mastered stone of her face suggested a long-learned hardness to the world. Even beneath the black cloth of the blindfold, he feels as if her eyes are upon him. 

“Where are you taking me?” Her British accent settles cooly over him, an unexpected resilience withstanding beneath the slight, almost imperceptible trembling of her fingers.

Phasma and Hux look to him. This is his job, his project. “We are transitioning you to the First Order’s Odysseus project, under the British-American joint intelligence command. As such, none of your questions will be answered unless I see fit.” He measures his voice carefully, “I suggest you don’t resist.”

To that, her lips pull slightly downwards, displeased, but they do not object. He doubts she had any notion of the First Order or the Odysseus project, as intelligence was a growing branch of modern warfare, and it was still early days. Some of his colleagues were less comfortable with his honesty to the acquired subjects, but it was common knowledge that anyone who joined them never had a chance to tell. He saw it’s uses: it offered a semblance of control to the subject, and through that the beginning of trust. Rey, of course, seemed thus far different to the usual cowering scraps of people he’d picked up over the years. Still, she was one of them. 

They escort her to the Rolls Royce outside. The heat had warmed the grey leather seats of the convertible so that their surface resembled a scalding iron. Rey’s own dirtied white garments, a linen skirt of shin-length and a long-sleeved blouse, wouldn’t endure the heat as their pressed uniforms would. To his surprise, Kylo finds himself wondering if it would do to place his jacket there. It’s a moment before he tells himself it wouldn’t be entirely absurd and he pulls the jacket from his shoulders, eliciting a look from Hux that suggests otherwise when he lays it on the back seat. 

Once he places her in the car, the guards secure her chains to the floor, where specially built rings have been made to contain those they escorted. The steel rings, connecting her wrists to their fastening between her feet, were loose enough for some range within her lap, but not tightly enough to hurt her. Two straps were tightened across her torso, preventing her from bending her head down and untie her blindfold. Had they not come in person to retrieve her, her transport arrangements would have been a lot worse. 

Hux assumes the driving seat this time, adjusting the throttle before taking off down the dirt road once again. As the dull silhouette of Niima faded behind, fifty miles of open nothingness stood between them and the sea-port of Tel-Aviv. Along the horizon to their left rose the long slopes of rocky hills, sparsely vegetated with olive trees and shrubbery. Within, the desert wildlife gathers and disperses from the oases, unaware of the three travelers traversing their world. 

Lighting his fourth cigarette, Hux takes in his share of smoke and nicotine. Kylo itches for a smoke himself, his palms twitching on his legs, but it would do no good to restart that habit now, not when they had several weeks confined in a submarine, even one as spacious as the Odysseus, ahead of them. 

A bit of movement in his peripheral vision catches his eye, and Kylo turns abruptly to check on the prisoner. She is seated as usual, only she had craned her head forward as if she strained to listen. Indeed, Kylo notes they’ve entered the ridges of the city, where the bleat of goats and ring of markets echoes throughout the streets. In Tel-Aviv, no one would watch on the blindfolded woman with them and report their concerns. All were complacent, accepting of the higher power. Thus, people were still permitted to go about their business. It is a stark contrast to the city they left, and Kylo watches Rey listen attentively. 

Anything to make her feel more in control, Kylo assumes. To be blindfolded was one hindrance, but for someone with abilities beyond the senses, her behavior would be intriguing to study in the weeks to come. From what he had read of her case file during the trip, her abilities depended on the opportunity for her to make eye contact with another person. What ensued afterward varied in the reports: evading the authorities, repeated assaults on other citizens, to various degrees of severity. Niima was not a kind place to women, Kylo guessed, much less a woman without any family or relations. It seemed the extent of her abilities in defending herself remained steadily consistent throughout the years. Provided he could change that, help her reach beyond her limitations, then perhaps things would change - for the intelligence community, for the allies, for the world. 

He wondered if that unsettled him, that a mere glance would render his mind open to her. He can’t imagine that his increasing heartbeat has anything to do with that possibility. There were risks in this job, but none that felt so personal, none that made the walls in his heart steel themselves abrasively, his inner being rejecting the threat. He wouldn’t want anyone to know his thoughts. To let another see his fears would never negate their reality; to reveal his desires would never actualize them. He was nothing, and he would remain untouchable forever. 

Hux flicked the butt of his cigarette over the side of the car, discarding it before they entered the military base. A series of four wrought-iron gates stood between them and their temporary headquarters for the Odysseus crew while maintenance checks were completed on the craft. 

When they parked beside the launch bay’s exterior, Hux and Kylo waited outside of the car for the other officers and guards to arrive. Among them, Lieutenant Dameron glanced over Kylo’s shoulder to the woman in the seat. Then he looked at Kylo curiously, noting his lack of a jacket. 

“You never said we were getting another woman, _ Doctor_.” He voiced abruptly, crossing his arms in agitation. From what Kylo knew of Dameron’s reputation in their months of working together, his anger was a facade to cover up any enthusiasm for the prospect of a woman in close quarters. If Poe could tell the scuffed up person in their backseat was a woman, it was guaranteed. 

Kylo shrugged, “We’re not transitioning her to group quarters. She’ll need a solitary space for now, and a guard outside it.”

“You’re shitting me. We’re at maximum capacity.”

“Lieutenant.” Kylo huffs, losing his patience. Poe leans in a little closer, cutting them off from the surrounding conversation. “This is…” he blinks momentarily, searching for the word, “the one we have been looking for.” His eyes narrow at Dameron darkly; he may not have a rank, but they both knew this was Kylo’s operation. “Get it done.” 

__

_ Doctor Ren, as per your orders. Anything goes. _

With that, Kylo cursed under his breath, clenching his fist around the smug note. Dameron just had to spite him on this one. The guard in front of his door glances nervously between his fist and his face. 

The Odysseus, in its 100-meter length, constituted the highest level of submarine technology the modern world had to offer. Shaped like a serrated bullet, its bulk displaced thousands of tonnes of water. Kylo had spent the majority of his time within on the observation deck, a wide-open control tower offering a grand view of the seascapes beneath the surface. Through the pressurized glass, every coral reef and marine canyon were warped in slight, but it was a feat of engineering nonetheless to have made it. Yet, in all its sleekness and splendor, the damn thing could not room more than seventy people between two bunkrooms and twelve singular units, in addition to makeshift brig that had completely occupied a cleaning closet. 

Naturally, Dameron’s best problem-solving skills had given him this - a practical joke using his two-by-three-meter bedroom and sink. Kylo pinches the bridge of his nose. He’d been at work for two hours in the study hall designing test layouts, and they had already left the launch bay. Too late to toss him overboard. 

“Sir,” the guard shifts his weight anxiously, picking up a burlap bag beside him. Kylo’s glare only deepens. “These- these are your things. Lieutenant Dameron -”

“Is a royal ass.” Kylo grunts, taking the bag from him. If this were anything like Dameron’s other “harmless pranks,” he’d have it fixed in the morning, after he made himself scarce of course. The last time Ren had broken his nose, it hadn’t healed over too well. 

Nevertheless, he was too tired and hungry now to pursue a vendetta. He’d have to make to do with a meal and cool off while he thought of something else to arrange for tonight. 

__

Although he would never admit it, Kylo was beginning to miss kosher. Even if the cooks had to restock on local produce at Tel-Aviv, that was still suspect to their personal damned English biases. Accordingly, dinner was garbage. 

Kylo’s tendency to eat at abnormal hours rendered this occasion particularly odd, as people were still milling about the mess hall. Although the clock hands indicated it was half-past eight, it seemed everyone had opted for a late dinner with the business of the launch having just been put behind them. What remained the same was his solitude, enforced by wary glances around him. They all knew full well; he wasn’t one of them. 

“I heard about your rooming mishap,” Hux drawled, plopping his tray across from Kylo’s. “You know, the League of Nations haven’t developed any maritime law yet.” Kylo raises his eyebrows at his colleague. 

“I’m just saying that if you killed the man, it wouldn’t be illegal. You’re also in no danger of getting court-martialed anymore.” A smile quirked at Kylo’s lip, although the brief reminder of his enlisted days made him wince a bit. It shouldn’t. He surrounded himself with the military every day. It was different, however, when it was for research and not the front lines of submarine warfare. Out there, he was nothing, but in here, well.

“I’ve considered it,” he replies jokingly. 

“ - Doctor Ren!” a sailor burst into the mess hall, face flushed, panting until he finds Kylo’s face. “It’s the subject!” 

__

“Why the hell did he open the door?” Hux muttered, looking distastefully at the naked guard on the floor. He was still alive, but his sternum was broken and his nose bloodied. “She can’t have persuaded him to do so if he couldn’t see through the door.” 

Kylo inspects the door more carefully, noting the ventilation grate at the top. “He could hear through it though,” he observed without enthusiasm, “we obviously may not understand her abilities as well as we thought. Commence a search party immediately.” 

__

With the ship on full alert, Kylo saw it best to change quickly into his full black wear. It would give them more problems were he to brush with some unsuspecting crewman, although that would counter their habit of evading him as much as possible. At this moment however, they needed to find her. He doubted some Niima scavenger knew how to operate a submarine. If she tried using her persuasion skills on any of the steering crew, she could sink them all. As a precaution then, the conning tower was on complete lockdown.

Lost in his thoughts beneath the blaring alarms, he looks around his room. The manila folder calls openly to him from his briefcase. He had read some from it earlier of various escape and capture attempts. Perhaps he could detect a pattern.

Skimming the files, he finds the data log he was looking for. She’d been within the periphery of Phasma’s unit for six months, evading authorities on three times within that time frame. Marketplaces, Passover, Ramadan. Her preferred place of escape was in the center of the chaos, in the midst of roaring noise and deafening havoc. With a sailor’s uniform, she could even be among those in the search party. 

Kylo shook his head. She might not have seen the crew, but she could infer that a boat full of men would take note of a woman, regardless if she was wearing a man’s clothes. If they didn’t see her face, it was plausible they could mistake her, but she wouldn’t have control over that. She could however, manipulate those who saw her. Still, there was a chance that even then she’d be overwhelmed. 

That left the search out of the question, which graciously narrowed down the possible spaces considerably. Nonetheless, they were losing time, before she’d come out of hiding and try something bolder.

In that case, he’d begin with the engine room. Before he could leave, however, there was still the mask.

__

The roar of steel machinery and steam turbines filled the air, the electric hum reverberating through his teeth and skull. The chaotic web of metal and glass surrounded him, bathed in dull red light. At the engineering desks, several morse-code machines sat idly to communicate with the conn tower. Gathering his thoughts over the noise, he steps purposefully towards them. If they could decrease the speed of the engines, he may be able to hear above them. 

Keeping his back toward the wall, Kylo moved his gloved hand to the machine and tapped the commands into it. 

_ Slow eng. Stop alarm. Send reinforcements. 009KR. _For good measure, he signed off his initials and crew number. 

Amidst the ear-splitting mix of alarm and engine, Kylo detects a quieting of them both. He didn’t have to wonder long before they get the message. Hissing, the steam engines slow to a steady purr, the turbines were humming less thunderously. As for the alarm, it has halted completely.

He takes his finger off the machine. Hopefully, they had the sense to send backup covertly; the last thing he needed was to hear that command on the intercom system and alert her to their plans. 

In the deep, violently red hues of the engine room, it became quiet enough to hear his breath over the hum of the machines. No, not his own. 

As he turns towards her, the butt of a rifle slams against his neck, bursting a world of pain in a cough from his throat. Although his initial urge is to keep his eyes open, a more durable instinct screws them closed. His hands reach out, clasping the gun between her own clenched fingers. 

In a burst of power, he wrenches it towards him suddenly, and she yelps from the sudden way her feet leave the ground. Steadying herself immediately, she thrusts a knee to his groin before exacting a brutal kick to his navel. He doubles over, but his grip doesn’t cease. If he’s to fight blind, he needs to change tactics.

Pushing the gun in their hands towards her forcefully, Kylo presses it into her gut until she falls backward under the impact of his charge. She kicks up at his chest as he stands above her, but the blows don’t land with enough force to hinder him. He tries again at ripping the gun from her hands, planting a foot on her stomach. As it leaves her fingers, he whips it towards him, snapping the rifle over his knee in one deathly, fluid motion.

She watches from the crated ground as he renders wood and steel in two, her fury morphing into terror, her fear lost on his closed eyes as he reaches to her. Yanked towards him, her paralyzed limbs awaken into desperation, a storm of blows hitting the man on his arms and chest uselessly until her fingers snatch his mask, ripping it from his face. 

The momentum of her effort sends her back a couple of paces, her spine hitting the back pipes of the engine room. The red light glints off the mask in her hands, its menace stilling time around them. Kylo has backed up as well, but it is for fear of something else.

When she looks up at him, he can’t see the way confusion flickers across her brow, how unwilling to fight her he suddenly seemed, and how her own body responded - full of hesitation and trembling. 

Her silence confounds him as well. Wetting his lips, he tastes blood, and beyond the walls, the echo of ready feet approach. They were at an impasse. 

“They know we’re here,” he rumbles lowly, without doubt. In his voice, she recognizes the man who retrieved her from her holding cell in Niima. She recognizes manipulation as well. 

“You’re one of them,” she spits. “There is no we.” His face, sweat and red glare cast over his long features, flinches from her tone. 

What assurance could he give her? Ragged pain drips from some chasm deep inside; too proud to admit his exact place in this order, as nothing; too weak to warn her of his power. 

The steps halt and a slam lands on the door, to which Rey jumps. She had locked it after Kylo had entered, but it seemed that it was only a matter of time before she was caught. 

“What do you want from me?” she cries, shuddering with fear. Her helplessness echoes into the space around him.

Kylo listens on as her tears fall, perplexed by this revelation. Surely this wasn’t what someone would say if she could bend minds with her own voice? Perhaps there was no way to know if she had already influenced his thoughts and his senses, but he felt his sense of reality had not left him yet. 

“You have a gift, Rey! But you need help,” Kylo shouted, as the pounding on the door increased, the shouts on the outside raised in volume. “You can trust me.” 

Her breath escapes her lungs as her eyes flit with panic between him and the door. Although they had not overpowered one another, the way he tore that rifle apart had changed something for her. There was no way she could restrain him and use him a hostage. As for the door, there would be too many people out there to bypass. 

If she could see just one, though, it could be enough. 

Her eyes rest on the man who brought her here, the monster whose mask she held in her fingers. Why he had stopped when he could so easily crush her, she didn’t know. Still, what he had done reflected insecurities and uncertainties unknown to Rey. This was the one she would use to escape, if only she could know. 

He doesn’t realize how she steps towards him until she is but feet away from him, and he resists the urge to flinch away. He raises his hands instinctively out from him, but they are only blind barriers. Yet he knows, would beg, she cannot touch his skin.

“You say I can trust you,” she murmurs to him, the warmth of her proximity stirring his mind with vibrant colors and treachery. “Look at me.” 

His lids flutter under the cool brush of her breath in the heated room. His heart pounds over and over again in his ears. A vise of instinctual, crippling fear grips his being though - he wonders if at any moment she would reach out and touch his face. He can’t let her. The only way to stop her was to look up and endure. 

His eyes open, though cast downwards. He can see how close she is, how her black socks poke out from beneath oversized trousers. Compromise simmers within him. He blinks away his doubts. To look at her won’t do away with who he is. He is already nothing, let her see it. 

As he summons the will to lift his eyes, the door crashes behind him. He cannot turn. Instead, his eyes jump to hers, their vibrant colors lost in the blaring sea of red around them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A real war happened in 1920 between a temporary kingdom in Syria and the French forces. After the end of WWI the Ottoman Empire's territories were split up among France, Britain, and other allied forces. Tere was resistance to France's occupation of Syria for several months in the year 1920, when our story takes place. Tel-Aviv was part of the mandate of Palestine, a UK-influenced principal at the time. 
> 
> King Odysseus was a hero who fought on the side of the Greeks during the Trojan War. He conceived the famous Trojan horse idea to infiltrate the city of Troy. His siding with the Greeks angered some gods, and Homer's story The Odyssey details his cursed travels through perilous seas and monster-infested lands on the way to Ithaca, where his throne and his wife are in danger of being taken. A great retelling of this story is Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (the book of course.) 
> 
> The visual idea of the Odysseus is based on Milo's submarine in the Disney movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which, to my utter surprise, is called Ulysses, the Latin name for Odysseus!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Some implicit sexual assault/harrassment themes. 
> 
> Will go back for typos.

In the next moments, Kylo cannot decipher whether she met his eyes or was entirely focused on the breech; he’d spend the hours and days thereafter reviewing that exact detail. 

__

009 Odysseus Project Log - Delta Route Day 3...

He uncapped his pen. Scribbled something. Scratched that out. Placed the cap back on. 

Testing would begin today. After Thursday’s near-catastrophic incident, the weekend should’ve seemed more welcome. But on a submarine all time was essentially arbitrary: there was always work to be done. 

0600 hours. So it had been what? Thirty hours or so since their brawl in the engine room. Since his compromise. 

When he had looked to her, the broken door had caught her off her guard as the room filled with a militant swarm. He himself was shoved back behind the onslaught of guards that seized her. Some would meet her eyes, complying when she screamed for them to unhand her. Still more came, snatching her arms behind her back and jerking her head down to face the floor. 

A flash of anger flared in Kylo as they jostled her. “_Careful!_” He shouted as they secured their grip tighter, throwing a burlap sack over her head. Snatching his helmet from the floor, he placed it on before he stormed through the soldiers towards her. At the menace of his approach and the raise of his voice the tumult stilled. Faintly, Kylo could hear the tapping of the Morse Code machine in the corner, under the hand of another shipmate. 

_ Subject contained. Advised Perseus protocol. Maintain high alert. FN2187 -- _

The space seemed to close between them rapidly as bodies parted to make way for him. On her arms, neck, and shoulders, the grips of several hands subsided, replaced by a singular firm hold on her right elbow. Perhaps from his hand alone, the silent strength and warning he sent through his covered touch, she knew it was him. Jangling chains were reapplied to her wrists, to which she didn't jerk away as before. 

__

Kylo lifted a cup of steaming black liquid to his lips. It was the first time in months he had had a drink of coffee from a clean mug. He couldn’t say he understood the tradition of not washing a simple cup in the navy, unless he could attribute it to general laziness. Nevertheless he’d complied with the custom up until now, when his usual cup rested on the sink in his room, now a holding cell. 

Thirty hours had been time enough to ensure a few matters on the Odysseus, not including a good night’s rest. As such, his duties might be impaired by exhaustion, but most of them were glorified paperwork rather than anything of consequence. 

Between his childhood being studied by Skywalker and the latter half of his twenties in the Great War, Kylo escaped his uncle’s facility, hiding his powers well enough to get an education, under a new name. In Boston his professors merged biology with the growing field of psycho-analysis, bringing light to the dark halls of many asylums. During the war, he befriended Armitage Hux. With little understanding of submarines, beyond the fact that the German ones had completely decimated allied naval forces during the war, Hux convinced Kylo his help was needed on their newest edition.

The Odysseus was the first in a line of the Starkiller class to actually function in depths of 200 meters, but this wasn’t an accomplishment enough. His position at first entailed noting any “adaptations" in the crew; it had been hoped, naively he always thought, that the subjection of the crew to such depths would pressurize them into super soldiers of a sort. These were orders from above - a commander unknown to Kylo at the time - Snoke. Although those mutations had never happened, the studies on mental effects of submarine confinement had yielded some findings. After several months, Snoke eventually gave up on the mutation-studies, or lack thereof. Discovering Kylo’s feats of strength in the war, medalled acts of heroism left behind in his hotel rooms, Snoke entrusted him with already gifted individuals. Abilities worth observing and cultivating, in the rare occasional case. Kylo knew one day Snoke meant to bring his weapon full circle, but he didn’t plan on being here for it. The work fascinated him, not the war, but he was here for more personal reasons. 

Of course, nothing had been as fascinating as her; everything that he had seen up until Rey had been mediocre, aside from his own abilities. They’ve had twenty one subjects over the years, and the most promising ones he’d seen had been the Peckham soldier - FN2187 - who could induce others to sleep, and the kitchen girl who could talk to animals. Still, they were the only ones to make it through the dark days out of the program and into the crew, . 

He uncaps his pen again, grimacing to himself. It seemed her time there wasn’t going to be any easier. According to her former guard, Craig, she had attempted to seduce him. Kylo rolled his eyes. After he had woken up, Craig was adamant to admit the particulars to any of the officers, of which Kylo wasn’t really interested anyway. It felt lecherous, in addition to unreliable. Also he didn’t need hearsay to make reports. He needed her. 

From their interactions, in addition to Phasma’s report, Kylo was pretty sure that vocal manipulation was out of the question for Rey. If that was one of her abilities, then it seemed self-defeating to go silent for two days, or to not use them when she had her chance with him in the engine room. Unless he could start tests however, his guesses were only that - ambiguous uncertainties. 

They were meant to start by now. His eyes flit to the clock, then to his wristwatch, only reinforcing the fact that they actually should have been here twenty minutes ago. 

Pushing his chair away from the desk, Kylo huffed as he stood, leaving his papers skewed over the table as he left the room. It was back in tans today, so no protective layers to push past people with. He’d settle for barking at them to move as he stormed his way to his old hall. 

Thursday night, the new security setup for Rey had included two guards stationed _ away _from her door, guarding opposite ends of the hallway, with alternating shifts to bring her meals and escort her to the restroom. What the setup certainly didn’t include was the group of sailors Kylo spotted crowded around her door, whispering beneath coy grins. A flash of hot anger flared through him, a determination to stop it immediately propelling him forward. 

“That son of a bitch,” one of them exclaims under his breath. “Craig wasn’t kidding, was he?” He leans in closer to the doorway and says something else Kylo doesn’t hear, only the collective rasp of breathy laughter it elicits from the others. 

“Shut your trap, Evans. I can’t hear,” said another one, audibly exasperated. Kylo rolled the blue sleeves of his work shirt rather pointedly as he took a stand behind them. When one of them noticed his murderous glare he jumped, and all of them flinched. The two guards fled back to their positions at the end of the hallway, while the other four or five scrambled off, dispersing in a quiet rush of terrified agility. 

What the hell was going on here? Everything about it seemed wrong, from their smug enjoyment to their being so invasively close in the first place. It filled him with inexplicable fury. His hands curl into fists at his sides, the beat of his heart a deafening rhythm. “Evans,” he snaps to the guard, “get over here.” Without looking at him, Kylo sensed the timidity in his approach. “What is the meaning of this? I told you yesterday to bring her to the testing center half an hour ago. What part of that sounded like a goddamn suggestion?”

“I know you can hear me,” a feminine voice calls softly behind the door, arresting Kylo’s senses. Evans, under wide brimmed glasses and a layer of uneven stubble, blushes furiously. Kylo suddenly looks between the door and the sailor, his lip twitches with confusion. A moan escapes after the voice, its sound an oddly forced mix of pain and pleasure. Was she hurt? He swallows thickly, wrapping his knuckles abruptly on the door. Another second without answer he undoes the lock, wrenching the door handle to swing it open. 

One step through the door brings him in front of her again, as she lies on the bed in the pinstripe pajamas they’d given her, hands bound. He notes from his periphery that her blindfold is on before looking at her more closely. She’s lying flat on the bed, but when she registers the door opening she arches her back, releasing another awkward moan through her lips. Stunned, Kylo blinks at her before realizing what it is she’s doing. 

“You honestly think that will work?” He grunts, incredulous at what he sees. He can tell she’s trying to lure someone in, but he still flushes at her feigned self-pleasure, turning his gaze away as an unsettling heat presses against his throat. 

Recognizing his voice, she sits up abruptly, all pretense of sensuality gone. Instead a different fire replaces it - one of embarrassment or fear or annoyance, Kylo can’t tell. Still her fire spreads into a warm blush, blossoming across her cheeks, her neck, down to just above her sternum where her top buttons were left undone. She shifts her hips to seat herself at the back of the bed, as far away from him as possible. 

“It worked with the last one. I’ve seen enough of men’s thoughts to know what they want,” she states flatly, her defiant glare palpable through her blindfold. And yet, her certainty wanders, a faltering he sees that sets Kylo off. 

“Are you sure about that?” 

Her scowl settles, her stillness unnerving him, but he stays composed. She seems to be outwaiting him, and he’s not here to play that game. 

“There’s nothing out there but ocean for hundreds of miles, all around us. If you could stop risking our lives and yours, and just give me a chance to help you...” His words are slowly spoken, both gentle and firm, with the hope that they would soften her will. “You could help yourself.” By the way her face indicates no reaction to his words, he reckons it’s a lost cause. To his surprise however, she breaks her silence. 

“I can’t stay here.” She offers hesitantly, wetting her lip. “I won’t go on as I have been, locked in here everyday.” Rey sits up, her confidence small but building. “And I can’t be called a subject anymore.” 

Kylo considers her, suddenly feeling small. He’s known walls like these all too well, has known that name himself. With that, he feels something in him fracture, her chains aren’t merely her’s alone. His teeth graze the inside of his cheek, suppressing the brokenness in him. If he wanted to work with her, he couldn’t get involved. Not personally. Pushing his empathy down, he rethinks her demands - a possibility of making progress. 

It could work, were he given the time to learn her skills, to loosen her bonds a bit. Not without proper planning, but still. 

“We can discuss this particulars over breakfast…” alertly, she sits up slightly, at his agreement to negotiate her terms or his mention of food, he isn’t sure. Thinking of the guards however, Kylo frowns. Her distraction probably cost her their attention to her meal. “I’m assuming you haven’t eaten yet?” 

Though Rey can’t quite get his meaning, the prospect of food is one she wouldn’t pass up. He calls in Evans, watching with striking anger when the sailor glances to Rey, and recalls what they had been listening to only five minutes ago. 

“You’ve been relieved from your assignment. Permanently. Be ready to leave when we arrive at land,” he says cooly, leaving the sailor dumbfounded for a moment before he leaves. Kylo’s jaw doesn’t unclench when he thinks of the others; he would deal with them later. 

“Stand up. Don’t move,” he orders Rey. He didn’t have any protective wear, but he didn’t have the patience to call in the other guard. She stands steadily, tensing when he places his hand on the sleeve of her upper arm, guiding her out of the room. 

The last they’d been in these hallways together was after that moment in the engine room; Kylo wonders if she was thinking of that as well. Their steps echo in the hallways, their presence eliciting curious looks from bypassers, followed by quick retreat from Kylo’s stormy countenance. 

Kylo leads her to the Wardroom, usually reserved for Snoke’s meetings with Hux during his visits. Since Rey’s arrival on the ship, however, it’s been his bedroom. The interior is wood panelled, with frames of various maps and photographs of the places they’ve been, in addition to a neat square of blankets and a pillow on the floor. After locking the door, Kylo seats her at one of the two chairs and moves the bedding aside, in the corner of the room. Then he opens the side door to the kitchens adjacent to the room. 

Spotting the Tico girl among those bustling to get the meals out, Kylo tells her to get them a breakfast and some kitchen scissors. She peers around him curiously, eyes catching sight of the much-discussed recruit from the last two days, before she turns to get him what he needs. 

Taking the breakfast tray and mugs from Tico, Kylo steps back into the room to set them on the table before retrieving a coffee pot and the scissors. At his order, Rose locks the door behind him and takes the key for the main door, and he stands by his chair across from Rey. 

Setting down the coffee pot, Kylo looks between her rope tied hands and her blindfold, deciding. “I’m going to free your hands so you can eat. You’re not to move them until I say.” 

Rey’s brow creases curiously as her hands rest on the table, the smooth glide of metal snipping the ropes free. Her fingers twitch as hunger pulses in her stomach, but resists as she hears him near her, stepping closer to stand behind her. 

His fingers brush the edges of her blindfold, avoiding the messy buns of her chestnut hair. Kylo lifts the blindfold, his hands excruciatingly slow. When he pulls it from her head gently, she can’t help the breath that escapes her, the confusion she feels pounding in her heart at his gesture. 

At first, Kylo debates putting it on his own eyes while they sit, but unlike two nights before, he doesn’t question his willpower not to look. Setting the blindfold down next to her tray, Kylo drifts back to his seat, moving to pour coffee into the metal mugs. “You eat. I’ll talk,” he says, his gaze focused on the coffee. 

She complies readily, seizing her spoon to eat the cream and porridge, savoring the cinnamon and dates tossed in. Occasionally her eyes flash to him, amazed at his trust as he watches the table over his coffee, sipping in silence for a minute before he gets to his questions. 

“Why were you in Niima? Your file didn’t say.” He only guessed she wasn’t from there, although the hue of her skin could have suggested so, her accent sounded contrary. 

Her hands stop, and Kylo wonders if he’d maybe started with too pressing a question.

“I was looking for my parents,” she replies lowly, her faint voice carrying some distant emotion to his ears. She can’t look at him either as she speaks, instead tracing the slopes of his forearm with her eyes. “When I was a child, they sent me to Britain, but after the riots broke out in Damascus…” She fills her mouth with another spoonful of date and porridge. 

“You went back?” 

She swallows, disliking how his eyes narrow at the coffee pot, dark and brooding. His calm astounds her, the gentle rise and fall of his broad shoulders with relaxed breaths. It calms her as well. “I didn’t know it would turn into a war. Even then, I would have gone back.” Rey sets her spoon down to sip her coffee, noticing how Kylo pulls his owns hands closer to him on the table.

Her confession rests in the air between them, a quiet claim to her own attachment to her parents that Kylo doesn’t share, however much he still loves them. 

Kylo changes the subject as he finishes his coffee. “Do you remember when you developed your powers?” 

Biting her lip, Rey checks to see how closely he’s watching her, testing the waters of their negotiation. “Next question.” 

Kylo’s brow raises quizzically, a smile nearly betraying his amusement at her building resistance. “Fine,” he breathes, rising from his seat. For a moment, she watches, shocked to see him so fine with leaving her that way, but he merely knocks a sequence on the kitchen door, retrieving the key from the kitchen girl. Was he taking her back to her cell? Instead, he slides it into the pocket of his navy slacks, moving back to sit with her. 

“Your crime, then? Prisoner of war was a bit vague.” His thumb ran over a pen in his pocket, his question one of personal curiosity rather than necessity. 

“I don’t know,” Rey replies firmly, her voice laced with the conviction of her truth. 

Kylo sits back, coming to the end of his rope. He’d never had to deal with someone so challenging, but he doubts her answer is one to confuse him further. They were talking, and that was enough to work towards his next plan. “Would you -” his thoughts blur, striving to express himself in a way that would make her see. “Would you consider it - working with me? There’s just so much unknown about your powers now…” 

He thinks of Tico and FN, how rare they were to his program, how many others were doomed instead to wither away under their fears until they were nothing? “There are others who have been here in your place. You can earn your freedom, as they did, by letting me understand them. Let me understand.” 

Something in Rey seems to soften as she considers the pout of his lip, unintentionally drawing her closer. Kylo tries not to shift under her gaze, only awed at her transforming demeanor. “I would,” she sighs, filling his chest with something oddly hopeful. She finally looks away, nearly trembling as she summons her courage, “But I have questions as well.” 

He crosses his arms, his silent nod affirming his assent. At his signal, her face practically perks, but she spies the bundle of folded bedding in the corner of the room.

“Is someone sleeping in here?” She voices abruptly, catching Kylo off guard as he briefly looks at her face. Her eyes are alert, her skin glowing, and he tears his eyes away before this moment - this danger -can go any further. 

“Yes,” he grunts, trying to blink away that moment of collapse. “It’s a temporary arrangement, since we’re at maximum capacity. That will change soon, though,” he says, thoughts glancing off Evans and Craig. Rey frowns to hide her smile, amused at the pathetic amount of space to accommodate his bulk. Her nose picks up hints of musk and wood, something distinct from the bland wall panels. It’s a mix of pine and sea salt, and she wonders if that’s his smell.

Still, there’s something he said that she could use. “Will it change then? I assume our next port isn’t far?” 

Kylo smirks, his jaw muscle flexing amicably. “Next question.” 

“Fine.” She replies curtly, thinking through the morning. “But I assume you’re taking Evans bed? I was there when you gave him the slip... It seemed a bit insensitive.” Kylo scoffs, nodding to the blindfold. 

“Put that on. We’re leaving.”

Rey sits back, shooting him a scowl. “But I’m not done yet.”

“Well, start then,” Kylo retorts. 

“If you would let me start!” She exclaims, without any real irritation. “But I want to know why you fired him.”

Kylo shifts, uncertain where her line of reasoning is heading. Another discomfort presses as well. “I don’t think Evans behavior was in line with acceptable conduct.”

“You mean he was attracted to me,” Rey states, a twinge of victory springing in her chest when he reacts nervously.

“It’s not that,” he falters, disliking the shift in the conversation, “his behavior was inappropriate, even if you were…” his throat feels like it’s closing, and he loosens the tie at his throat to breathe a bit better. 

Rey’s lips purse, considering his new unease. Of course, she would often see herself in compromising positions in men’s thoughts. If she was desperate, she played on those thoughts to bring them in. Then she’d knock them out and take their money, or escape. Rey admitted as much when she told him she knew how men worked, but didn’t he ask her if she was sure of that? As if he were different? The man seemed so resolved not to touch her. Although there were the calculated ways he took her arm or the clash of their bodies in the engine room, every brush was protected. “But you don’t… think of me that way?” She blinks, her curiosity pressing him. 

Shocked, Kylo’s eyes flash to the exposed skin of her sternum, the modest valley of her breasts through the edges of her shirt. He couldn’t think of her that way, of her with him in a passionate embrace. It wasn’t only impossible, it wasn’t his place. “No,” he says, his silence after that thickening and dark. 

Rey, on the other hand, skips to her next question, as if Kylo wasn’t still recovering from the last one. “What is it you want to do then?” She prompts. Kylo unscrambles his thoughts, pulling her real meaning from the cryptic question. 

“I um.. I use a polygraph to measure brainwaves. I’ll be measuring yours, as well as those of the crew members you saw in the engine room.” In the last day, their security measures only found four other crew members, aside from Craig, who had been influenced by Rey briefly in her escape attempt. “You’ll do exercises, and we’ll discuss your powers further - I must understand the range of your capabilities if you’re to have more freedom.” Rey nods thoughtfully, thinking over his words with care. “And the others you’ve done this with?”

“Finn and Rose,” Kylo thinks a moment, his mind pulling names from case files rather than numbers. “They were the first, just last year.”

“And what about you?” Rey chances, watching his face, impossibly, pale even more.

So she had noticed? Kylo wondered bitterly. Perhaps the thoughts of the others had betrayed him, although they were only suspicions. Witnessing the snap of the rifle over his knee would have alerted her to something, at least. It made his strength visible. He had never kept that so desperately hidden. It was his skin he wanted to hide. “That’s not up for discussion,” he hissed, rising abruptly. 

In his stand is a line, drawing an end to her questioning. His silence doesn’t spell defeat; however, only a change in strategy.

“Your name then?” She asks, bidding his silent request as she pulls her blindfold back over her eyes. “What do I call you?” 

Kylo’s unsure if he hears a double meaning in her words, though now he allows himself to look at Rey, her expression blank beneath the blindfold as her hands return to her sides. They look calloused, but feminine. He looks back to her face. “My colleagues call me Doctor or Ren.”

“Ren?” she says, wetting her lip as if to taste his name. Something amuses her, or surprises her, but she hides it away before Kylo can decipher her reaction. Instead, there is his own, a rising heartbeat, an unsteadiness within him. 

__

“Are you finished?” Hux stood across him and his empty dinner tray, disapproval plain on his face as he sat down. 

Kylo moves his tray to the side, meeting Hux’s eyes with his full attention. “If this is about your men, I don’t want them here,” he rumbled, voice darkening.

“It’s not your choice who we’re firing,” Hux counters, though any genuine anger dulls a little, “but if it’s necessary, I’ll have them replaced.”

Something about his composition unsettles Kylo. “Why do we need them replaced? We’ve functioned with a sub-max crew before, couldn’t we do it again?” 

Fear flashes across Hux’s eyes, so briefly Kylo barely caught it. After the fear is a warning.

“Not now,” Hux whispers, “later.” 

With understanding, Kylo nods. Whatever Hux had to say, it wasn’t good. If the full crew was needed, there must have been something he knew coming ahead. 

“How did the tests go today?” Hux says, changing the subject. Kylo would get it out of him later. He hoped it wasn’t another attack drill. 

Kylo shrugs at his question, though secretly, he was pleased. There was some progress with the tests.

“She’s working with me. The results have been a little different from Phasma’s report. She sees minds in senses and feelings, rather than distinct words. She can see or hear or smell their surroundings and peer through those minds to examine someone’s environment, and that’s only after initial eye contact.” He thinks back to her sitting in the test room, her hands bound on the table as she recounted what the others were being shown. Yes, he was impressed, but he wanted to know more, and he would, given the next few days.

“And the other crew members?” he prompts, meaning the ones from Kylo’s test studies.

“The four will have to stay on minimum security work, and avoid hallway C if possible; she can still see their minds given that proximity, so we’ll have to ensure that the situation stays secure.” 

If he wanted to learn more, they’d also have to be willing to look at her again. Not a prospect he feared but one he strangely envied. Where days ago, he found himself afraid to hold her eyes, now he was intrigued, and he couldn’t afford that. Kylo bans the thought as Hux nods thoughtfully.

There were other things to review, possibilities they hadn’t tested yet. “I’m still designing tests for communication and persuasion, but I still think…” His voice drops off, flinching a bit at his resurrecting compassion.

“You still think what?” 

He looks back again when Hux speaks. “I still think she deserves a break - some more movement or something like that.”

“Really?” Hux smiles with surprise, but his eyes remain serious, turning over Kylo’s words. “If you think so, perhaps the crew could use a break as well… I might know what’ll work.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading! I hope it was satisfactory :) 
> 
> The Perseus reference is to the Greek tale of Perseus, a hero who succeeded in facing off Medusa. Medusa's eyes turned onlookers into stone, but Perseus defeated her with the help of Greek gods Hermes and Athena. 
> 
> What is Hux's news? Did Rey manipulate Kylo into staying? Who tried to hurt our cinnamon roll?! Questions to be answered in the upcoming chapters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated as a separate chapter from chapter 2! New stuff coming soon :)

Excitement lingers in his limbs as he strides down his old hall, thinking over tomorrow evening. It’s rare to have the sort of event Hux was planning so soon from their last shore-launch, but Kylo suspected his pending news had something to do with it. Lifting morale. 

When he knocks on her door, an unexpected sob shatters his lifted spirits. Concern spearing through him, he wraps his knuckles again, with more urgency this time. 

Whether she replies or not, Kylo can’t tell, only that he’s begun undoing the locks. He’s placed the newest guards even further down the hall this time, out of sight of his door. He’s also placed new locks, more to keep others out than to keep her in. Still, the rising fear in his lungs grasps at the different keys, cursing when he puts in the wrong one. She wasn’t alright, and he was worried. 

Her startled gasp escapes her when the door swings partway open, hitting something heavy - his mattress. “Rey, what happened?” She’s barricaded herself in, a feeble attempt if it was for him, but he doesn’t force the mattress away, something telling him it must be him she’s afraid of, as she had been.

Her voice replies, broken and upset, but trusting. “I heard someone, I heard -” she says, stifling another shaky breath as she gets up to move the mattress out of the way. “There was someone there. I didn’t know what he wanted. He was angry, and I was afraid he’d kill me or…” Kylo steps in through the door, closing it instinctively when he enters. When he sees her, however, he feels guilty for considering she was trying to escape. 

This time, it’s as if she’s the one who will not meet his eyes. Her face is swollen and red, her eyes bright with spent tears. With a hand on the corner of the mattress, Kylo pushes it back onto the narrow bed frame, and she sits at its edge, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Erratically, her breaths continue, her efforts to compose herself failing. 

“Rey, can you breathe?” Kylo’s worry isn’t abating, but he knows it would do no good to panic himself. He sits next to her, hoping to calm her, and she turns towards him, hand shooting out to rest on his chest. She stares at it as he stares at her, the electric shock of her touch permeating through his clothes. His breaths remain shallow, but steady, paralyzed under her hand as she matched her breaths to his.

He’s watched her eyes too long, and yet it doesn’t feel like long enough. As her breathing evens out and she reclaims her power to think, her hand slides back into her lap, the redness of a blush mixing with that of her shaken state. His eyes slip away as well, back to her hand, the lingering sear of her fingers still bright where they had been. “Tell me again what happened.”

Rey shifted, decidedly setting her quivering lip. “I - I was trying to sleep when I heard him. I didn’t notice him at first, he was so quiet, but he was there for a long time.” She wrapped her arms around her middle loosely, as if to protect herself from the memory. 

“He was angry and afraid. At one point, he reached for the door handle, but he couldn’t open it. He cocked a gun, and he thought of shooting it off...” In her eyes, which had been so full of defiance before, a dark bitterness hardened, fighting with terror. Who had done this to her? 

“When did he leave?” Kylo spat, nearly snarling. More of a demand than a question. She shakes her head, bewildered by his fury. 

“Ten minutes ago.”

Kylo stands suddenly from the bed, rage pulsing in waves from his skin. “Kylo! Stop!” She stands in front of him, pushing him back with both hands on his torso. Though her force hardly moves him, her words are a force of their own, and he meets her gaze, simmering. 

“Don’t you see?” he snaps at her, “it could only have been one of them. Only five of them had looked.” Her jaw sets, her eyes tracing the darkness of his, hungering for him entirely. 

“And you.” She murmurs. Then, only then, had he noticed the kindled bridge of their minds. 

He sees it now, would remember it later, how unthinking he had looked, had met her eyes with determination, with righteous fury, with compassion - with weakness. It didn’t matter whether or not he had met her eyes in the engine room when it was his goal to capture her. Now he was somehow her protector, and she must have seen it in his thoughts, in his eyes. And though he had no right, he had to leave nonetheless. 

“Don’t.” She sighs, answering his unsaid words. “_Stay_.” 

Something brushes against his thoughts, lightness, and warmth, was it compassion? She wanted him there, and the way she looked at him, trusted him, he couldn’t take it. 

He tears his gaze away. “I can’t,” he says, looking down at his feet. Did he have the strength to leave? The fire of fury seeps away, the desire to be beside her more alarming, more necessary in his mind. How much he wanted to say she had commanded him to, but the yearning is as much his as it is hers. 

Then, in the middle of the pain and confusion, she anchors him. Her arms wrap around him, her face buried in his chest, her eyes closed as she rests her head on him, “I want you to stay, please,” she speaks, her voice a soft lull, her trust everything. “Stay.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter! But more to follow soon.

Why? He wants to ask, though whether it’s to question her embrace or her plea, he doesn’t know, only that he’s somehow powerless to break away. 

When she lets go of him, glancing into his eyes a moment, it’s as if she remembers some searing truth, letting go of him. Yes, he recalls, she should know I’m dangerous. But she doesn’t rescind her request for him to stay, instead she pushes herself into the corner of the bed as if making room for two. 

Kylo opens a cabinet for a pillow, which he tosses on the floor at the far side of her bed haphazardly. “Not a chance,” he scoffs, turning away before he sees her reaction. 

The bridge is made, although Kylo cannot feel it distinctly, he’s sure of its reality. 

Which is why she should understand the danger his closeness would be to her. Although she couldn’t hear it in clear words, he knew she could see the pain his powers cost him, dulled into an ever-present numbness. Images of the ones he’s touched before resurface in its mind, each brush rendered impossible by the agony his skin inflicted on others. As he remembered it, she should have been able to see that. 

And yet, it’s as if she had pulled away from his thoughts, her quiet undisturbed by his chaos. He tugs the string hanging beneath the room’s lightbulb to turn it off, the darkness absolute. Kylo lies on the floor, resting his head on his hand as he looks up at her, or to where she should be. Some light, a dim glow from the holes of the air vent above the door, leaks in from the hallway. She’s curled into a ball, her head at the opposite side from his, breathing evenly. Within Kylo, some unnamed force pulls at his heart, rippling through the quiet.

“Rey?” 

Her body shifts slightly, rolling onto her other side to face away from him, and Kylo wonders if she’s heard him and turned away. Then she groans a small, unsettled sigh into the thin metal wall. Another image brushes his mind, like the last one, but less clear. As if unbidden, the faintest picture of her dream escapes her - a dark and shifting scape of sudden noises and shadows. 

Dual feelings of awe and worry filled him. The first, amazement at this discovery, bids him listen to her dream as her mind opens under the curtain of sleep. Among the things he sensed were smoke, sand, and chains. To what fears, real and imagined, that her mind yielded to he didn’t know, only that they wrought the second of his reactions. Worry. Was this every night for her? His thoughts flashed to those whose battles in the trenches of the war, their psyches marred by the sound of raining bullets and explosions. War neuroses, or shell shock, they would call it. Men go off to be tested for courage, if women are tested at all, it’s for patience. He’d seen such things in his mother’s life, given from the hands of one man to another. The tests given to him showed no courage, only the benefit of playing it safe. Where was Rey in all of this? Her life was so unknown to him, if nothing like a normal woman’s in bearing patience, or a case file to be read. 

Her dream only grows more dangerous, pulling him in with rapid breaths. _ Rey, _whereas earlier her strength had been no match for his, under the weight of her thoughts he couldn’t move. The sensation reminds him of Finn, his powers to induce unconsciousness a heavy weight, though more pleasant than anxious. The thought jumps to his mind to try something, taking what he knows of FN’s powers to think. Of course, Kylo’s abilities are more physical, but it’s his thoughts alone that are open to her, right now, in this place. 

Calm. Kylo imagines the azure waters of the Mediterranean, shimmering like jewels all around them. He pictures them in every part of the day and every season, their glittering mass under the summer moon, the constant roar of their waves on sun bathed rocks, and then, in autumn, how the sun rises where the sand meets the lapping waters of the sea, the morning air rendering the ocean still. 

They’ll be there soon, so it is all he could think of. Still, she quiets once again, and a new sensation presses against his mind, wrapping itself around his thoughts. He can move once again but finds himself strangely comfortable where he is. 

A shadow crosses over the holes of light that come in through the door above his head, or perhaps Kylo had imagined it. His eyes glance darkly to the space there, a part of him reminding himself to be careful with his thoughts, unless he were to throw her into darker dreams again. You’ll be safe, Rey. He drifts to sleep, the words unsaid on his lips. _ I promise. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Straight into the stuff this time! Not much experience with this, so would appreciate any prompt suggestions for burn time!

Something rakes over his chest in slow, excruciating lines, sending a bolt of warmth to his core. He shudders, not from the cold of the metal floor beneath him, but from the need that spears through his unsuspecting body. 

When the sensation curls around him, wrapping around the muscles of his back and shoulders with passionate intent, his body embraces it before his mind seems to catch up. As he comes to senses, however, Kylo snaps awake. 

What he felt now was fear. Clouds of it gathered, obscuring the momentary pleasure of the undissolved tension in his body. The ticking of Kylo’s watch filled the small space with its rhythm as he shifts to lie on his back, ignoring his arousal with rapid, focused breaths. His eyes counted the number of metal bolts on the ceiling until he finally grasped control. 

He can’t afford to give his thoughts to any desires, even for a moment. Although he thought the burden of such dreams had left him long ago, they seemed to have resurged with a vengeance. Kylo would have discarded it for later thought, but the light moan that escaped Rey, accompanied by another shudder in his core, renders him instantly aware of exactly what is happening. 

Bolting upright, Kylo stands abruptly to turn on the light, which sends Rey hiding under the scratchy grey cloth of his duvet, interrupting her dream completely. As he pulls his shoes on, refusing to look at her, his thoughts sink into Rey’s mind, drawing her eyes to his furious blush as she emerges from the covers. 

_ It was you? _ Her words seem to slip from her own mind accidentally, unintended for him, and yet they burn in his mind. But they don’t hold half the power that the image he sees next holds, an incapacitating blaze of her body beneath his, mixing limb and touch and _ taste _. 

“Stop!” Kylo bursts out, as Rey gathers her own bearings, sensing the war within him. This was different than the minds she usually saw, different than the desires that usually warped her appearance to the beholder, and she didn’t know what to make of it. 

Rey stands, noting the red ears that poke out through his dark locks, the fingers that tremble as they smooth over his clothes. “I’m sorry” she mumbled, still waking up. “I didn’t mean for that to...” she quiets, at a loss for energy to phrase herself.

But through her slight embarrassment, a fraction compared to his own, Kylo can feel her compassion nonetheless. This has gone so much further than he had imagined, and yet with all the power she has over him now, she’s apologizing to him. “You don’t have to be. Clearly this is new for both of us.” 

Even as he said it, the realization dawned brighter in Kylo’s mind. Had she not connected to so many minds before? And yet this time, she had opened her own to him in a way he could tell was unshared with anyone else. His teeth ran over the inside of his cheek. This was certainly new. 

Rey watches Kylo warily as he thinks over this, pondering his realization for herself. 

Kylo senses a sudden barrier to her thoughts, although whether he’s relieved or left wanting he’s unsure. There is a shift from the unrelenting trust she had offered him last night, as if she too had realized, fearfully, that she had been so vulnerable. It’s fearful for him too, but the memory of her trust cools him, and his shoulders relax.

“Will you leave?” She murmurs.

Kylo knows she means more than her words say. Will he leave her for his own sake, now that staying could mean losing himself? Briefly, Kylo considers the worst. She’d levy her power over him to escape, to hurt his comrades if need be. But something tells him this means more to her than that, that stopping this connection completely, shutting her out to protect himself and his crew, would amount to nothing. She winces, watching the image of him turning away.

“I’m not going to do that,” he says, sensing her hurt. He lets his intentions sink in, reassuring her. “For now, there’s nothing I can change. We’ll have to keep going as usual.” Suddenly she sees it, the trajectory of their vessel as it nears port.

“Gibraltar?” Rey’s eyes widened, almost in fear, glimpsing a great mountain in his thoughts, its ridges holding up the azure sky. 

“Malta actually,” he answers, checking her anxious expression curiously. “Although I wouldn’t recommend trying to get away, unless you’re comfortable swimming to the shore,” he said, half jesting. 

“Understood.” Rey bites her lip, weighing his thoughts. “What do we do now?” 

Kylo’s thoughts flash to the threat of last night, flinching with fear before cooling with anger. That man had been free to walk the vessel last night, but now Kylo would deal with him properly.

A loud hiss echoes from the hall, the sound startling them both. Rey sits up when Kylo turns his head, alert to the sound of the ballast tanks, the hiss followed by the thrum of the ship’s surface-propulsion systems. For some reason, they had reached the surface hours before he had anticipated. 

This couldn’t be good. The surface trip had been scheduled for the afternoon; anything that brought them up would be an issue. Kylo vaguely remembers his discussion with Hux in the officer’s mess, when the admiral had hinted at some pending calamity. 

“Go,” Rey tells him, holding her hands together. “I’ll be alright.” 

Hearing her voice, Kylo looks up and knows she’s right. He needed to leave.

___

The doctors at the maternity ward marveled at the newborn whose skin appeared like any other but was sharp to the touch. His mother had held him as close as she could, but even she had to protect herself. Before he was five, the pain his skin left had grown beyond discomfort to those around him. For the first time, he was labeled untouchable. 

By the age of ten, he had hospitalized his own father. It was not until years later, after he endured several studies under the eye of his uncle, that Kylo saw his father again, lying on his deathbed. The trenches had done their worst on Han Solo, but he was still a father. 

In his last moments, he had reached out to hold Kylo’s face. That was what did it in the end, the doctors had said. Kylo couldn’t help but wonder if they were right: if his father’s final gesture was really an escape from his pain or a symbol of his love. 

Even if it had been love, Han Solo’s son was still a monster. Kylo knew it when Rey took off his mask. He knew it when he passed his shipmates in the halls. And he knew it when he rounded the corner after leaving Rey’s room, and with alarming force, knocked into another person. 

Halting, Kylo stumbled as he stopped, seeing Poe Dameron in a towel as he left the shower hall. A quick glance over, and he didn’t appear to be hurt -. Kylo cursed himself for his recklessness, but then much more when his eyes dropped to the writhing figure between him and Poe - Armitage Hux.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for updates! Starting by revisiting a convo between Hux and Kylo earlier in the fanfic. 
> 
> I'm really touched by the encouragement you guys have given for this story! I hope you guys enjoy the latest installment.

He had difficulty imagining that just yesterday they had been at it again, old friends who shared values, dispositions, on occasion, a sense of humor. But most of all, a shared fondness of their work together. 

“I still think she deserves a break - some more movement or something like that.”

“Really?” Hux had smiled at his odd request. “If you think so, perhaps the crew could use a break as well… I might know what’ll work.” 

“You planning on setting up a party in the observation deck again?”

“I was thinking more of a swim call, just before we get into port. There won’t be any time for the beach while we’re there,” Hux said, more to himself. The man was in need of a break. 

Kylo could imagine, those clear blue days that bled into vibrant sunsets. Odysseus would surface, and they’d get the crew together for a jump into the ocean, right off the edge of the vessel. Of course, the risk that his swimming shirtless posed to the other crew members meant he stayed at the watch point. The watch-point man was usually armed, with the job of keeping a lookout for sharks, although apparently the gun wasn’t to shoot the shark, just the furthest swimmer. _ “Gives the others a fair chance to swim back,” _was the typical jest. 

“I’ll tell you what,” Hux elaborated, finishing his tea, “if you think the subject needs a break, you can take her out after the guys get a swim. I’ll give you an hour.”

And there it was. Perhaps Hux had perceived something that Kylo hadn’t yet, something shared between himself and Rey that wasn’t just the aptitude of their powers. Whatever it was, Kylo hadn’t had a mind for it. Only for the odd excitement in his chest, and he suddenly felt pretty grateful for his friend...

Now it had changed, not his gratitude, but his peace. It took every fiber of Kylo’s being to reject his first instinct, to not wrangle Hux’s thrashing body from the floor and hold his oldest friend close. But the damage of his touch had already been done. 

“Ren!” Poe exclaimed, looking with equal shock to their Admiral. “He’s hurt! Help me move him!”

Was he blind?! Or maybe insane. Kylo assumes the latter when Poe whips off his towel, tossing it onto Hux’s legs for Kylo. “You take that end.”

Kylo would have rejected Dameron’s ridiculously stark naked request, but he knew his friend’s life was at stake. Poe hoisted Hux from the floor by his shoulders, working with Kylo to get him to his room. Passing another crew member on the way, Poe called for him to get the medical officer. With barely any awareness of his surroundings, Kylo drifted to Hux’s side, watching his pained face twist in agony.

Graciously, Poe rewrapped his towel and made way for the medical officer, who cautiously brushed past Kylo to treat the admiral. Something directed at him rouses him from his stupor. “Check his nerves, heart, and spinal cord.” Kylo said mechanically, vaguely detecting a question about symptoms directed at him by the medic. 

The medic nodded, getting to work investigating the damage. 

His eyes drop, not quite meeting Kylo’s. “The admiral might live, but I’m afraid it will take a facility to address his issues. _ Immediately _.” 

Another hiss from the ballast tanks and Kylo reemerges to reality, turning on Dameron with a sudden force. 

Only to find he isn’t there. “Dameron!?” There’s no sign of him from the hall. Leaping to his feet, Kylo runs into the hall, care abandoned as he runs towards the conn tower, at the base of which are the lieutenant’s quarters. “Dameron!” Kylo pounds the door with his fist. 

His teeth grate together when Poe doesn’t open the door, and he makes for the ladder to the control room, climbing through the narrow space. 

It was an odd choice to put Poe Dameron second in command. When Hux had done so after Rey’s escape attempt a few days prior, Kylo had been too absorbed in security details to question his reasoning. Now that Hux couldn’t explain that for himself, Kylo needed answers. As for the surface-breech, unease gripped Kylo’s spine in a tight vise. The League of Nations may have declared peace in their time on paper, but in these waters, anything could happen. 

Presiding over the control room with more calm than Kylo himself had at that moment, Poe drifted casually over the shoulders of various control mechanics, uttering low commands while water dripped from his curls onto his uniform. 

“Lieutenant.” Kylo huffed, making his presence known. “Do you care to tell me what the hell is going on?!” 

Poe, as if just noticing Kylo’s menacing stance by the navigating tech, holds his hands behind his back as he looks to him. “I'm acting as commander now. But titles, who gives?” He eyes Kylo up again, “you want to tell me what you’re referring to?” 

“Why.” He enunciates slowly, as if, believably so, he’s speaking to a moron, “have we _ breached _ the surface?” 

His nonchalant shrug irks Kylo. “We’re bypassing the HMS Hermes. They’ve just called down to us for a rendezvous. It’s damn lucky if you ask me, considering the state Hux is in.” He adds, making Kylo wince. 

“We’re nowhere near our next port.” He counters, simmering. Whoever was driving that aircraft carrier might have had a higher rank than Hux or Dameron, but Kylo didn’t want his project near any hot-shot warheads. “You know we can’t breach until we’re within proper range of Malta.”

“The admiral’s life is more important than that, wouldn’t you agree? They can fly us out there as soon as possible.” At Poe’s suggestion, given with nearly languid indifference, Kylo almost implodes. 

Poe catches Kylo's escalating temper, finally detecting some danger at prompting another broken nose. “Um… look, Ren. While you’ve been with the subject,” he casts a wary glance to Kylo as he tenses, phrasing himself carefully, “Hux and I have had a lot to organize. For one, the Odysseus needs seven new recruits, as per your request to discharge ours.”

Working at one of the telegraph desks, a sailor timidly interrupts Poe and Kylo’s verbal crossfire to give Dameron some information, which he absorbs quietly before turning back to Kylo. “We’ve already sent a distress call for Hux, which they’ve answered. They can receive us at oh-eight-hundred hours and accompany Odysseus to Malta while we fly Hux out.”

0800 hours. Kylo bites his cheek, considering the unfolding possibilities. His thoughts tangle to see everything happening so rapidly. 

“I’ve got a visual on a centaur class aircraft vessel at twenty degrees north-west.” Finn, manning the periscope, calls out to the room, unaware of the growing tension. 

Kylo’s eyes flicker to him, then to Poe again, attempting to take control of his inexplicably short temper with deep breaths. If he had a moment to get a proper plan in place before they could be overwhelmed with curious outsiders, it would help his grating annoyance, as well as the risk of overexposing their project. With additional thought to Hux’s pre-warning last night, carving worry lines into his features, Kylo wonders if Poe would have heard from Hux what was about to happen. “A moment, _ Commander Dameron _?”

___

Poe and Kylo’s tête-à-tête had been more successful in laying some groundwork than their previous discussion. From the time they had received a visual of the HMS Hermes, they had twenty minutes before they would intercept. That was much less time than Kylo preferred, but it gave time for he and Dameron to agree on a couple of things. 

Firstly, they would need two planes from the aircraft carrier. One to send Hux immediately to the medical facility at their port in Malta. The second would fly off later after they had gathered the various sailors Kylo wanted extradited. 

Leading to their second plan, they would not send all of the sailors until Kylo could conduct an interrogation. Whoever had stood outside Rey’s room last night had had some eye contact at her at some point, which left the four sailors he’d been conducting studies with, in addition to Craig. 

“Wait, what happened again?” Poe interrupted, as Kylo carefully omitted the part where he looked into Rey’s eyes, and the part where stayed with her in her quarters overnight. 

“Rey Kenobi was physically threatened last night, and from what I’ve gathered, it’s one of the five men whose minds she can access.” Kylo’s skin blazed as he said the words aloud, “I don’t want anyone besides Hux leaving until we find out who it was and keep him confined.”

“Forgive me for pointing this out, Doctor, but you’ll find confining everyone pretty doable, given how sub life normally is.” Kylo’s glare scalds him, and he tones down the sarcasm. “But for safety’s sake, we’ll keep an eye on the conn tower and escape vessels. All the lockdowns,” he says, raising his hands in surrender. “Nobody leaves but Hux.”

Hearing his assent, Kylo inwardly releases some tension, but he’s still got a few things to set straight. “No one comes in aside from a medical crew. And they leave immediately.”

Poe nods once, “Agreed. Hermes’ business probably has something to do with Hux, but I’d prefer they’d take it to the mainland once he’s better. I reckon it’s the telegram he received yesterday, though he spoke of it pretty vaguely…”

Briefly, Kylo remembers Hux’s forewarning. If they needed a full crew as Hux had suggested, then Kylo could expect some sort of drill, or worse, an ambush. Regardless, Kylo knew that the only immediate danger was that of sharing too much information, even within their crew. “Did you read it?” 

“No, it's probably coded anyway,” Poe said, glancing at his watch. They had about eight minutes until interception. “I think he keeps his codebook somewhere in his room.”

He didn’t keep it there, because Kylo knew precisely where the codebook was. Not that he had seen it, only he knew it would be where Hux hid the rest of the ship’s most sensitive documents. 

He hummed momentarily, not bothering to feign ignorance. “You can look for it, but you’ll probably need proper security clearance to read it.” 

Poe shrugs, “I’ll get that soon enough, especially if -”

He cuts himself off, recognizing the morbid undertone of his words. Only he saw it too late. Kylo didn’t need mind powers to know the rest of that sentence. 

___

The medical crew came on board that moment, and Kylo and Poe intercepted them as planned. Kylo left Poe to watch them like a hawk as they transferred his friend. It was all he could do not to go with them, but there was Rey. 

Before he had even reached her hallway, he felt the presence of her mind brush against his. Safe, relieved even, as her own thoughts encountered the pictures in his mind. 

“I came as quickly as I could…” He opens the door to see her, dressed in the blue women’s overalls they gave her, her hair pulled haphazardly into a bun, the flyaway wisps of chestnut hair framing her face. And her eyes, they see him. It’s even more potent than sensing her from the hallway. Instantaneously, Kylo can’t help but show her everything. Up until her, feeling her presence, knowing she was safe, despite everything suddenly seemed thrown into uncertainty. 

“I know.” Rey’s hand moves towards him, resting on the edge of his sleeve, dangerously close to his wrist. “Like I said... I’m alright.” She pulls him to the bed, seating him beside her as his eyes close, a hand to his temple. 

Beneath the anxiety, an image brushes his mind, an island enveloped in a sunrise. Kylo gasps, recognizing the very island he wrapped around her in her dreams. To comfort her. He receives her message with deeper breaths, the image deepening in hues and sensations. How could it be more beautiful than he had imagined himself? Perhaps it was her, the colors of her soul in the visions behind his eyes. Surf crashed on the beach. He could feel it through the sand as smaller waves moved in and out from between his feet, sinking them into the sand. 

"Thank you," he exhales softly. "You don't know how that feels." 

A quiet beat ensues, and he finally opens his eyes. Her's held steadily to the space between where her fingers rest on his sleeve and the pale skin of his hand.

Soon he finds himself staring as well, but he blinks, shame arising within him. How could he think to hold her hand? What monster was he to allow himself to indulge in that fantasy when his best friend writhed on the very same vessel? Because of him, unequivocally. 

He pulls his arm away. When her fingers retreat as well, he is shaking. 

Friendship, compassion, nothing negates the meaning of his touch. Pain, and death. Nothing else. 

"Kylo - " sensing his anguish, Rey starts, conflict bubbling within her. He sees it as well; her carelessness allows him that much, but not enough to understand her meaning truly. 

So she's afraid as well. Good, Kylo thinks to himself. It's better for them both this way. Then another thought reminds him of the threat at hand. He's vowed to be her protector. How ironic. Yet here he sits, neglecting the man who still roams the ship in wait to harm her. 

Standing abruptly, Kylo strides towards the door. He'll settle this for her. Nothing would stand in his way. His palm finds the cool of the door handle, but his will weakens to open it. "Rey, I'm grateful for you," he says lowly, looking back to her one last time. "And I don't want you to be afraid." 

Hopefully, she could hear it, could see it in his thoughts: she ought to be more careful around him, as much as he wanted her beside him. He had to be more careful; if he wasn't, nothing less than her life was at stake. Their promise was still there. They had to work together. 

"Oh," Rey's breath hitches slightly, her eyes widening slightly. " I understand," her voice is quiet, sorrowful even. 

He opens the door for her, and Rey steps through, her expression recomposed, inscrutable. Kylo pulls a blindfold from the pocket of his trousers, absentmindedly running it between his forefinger and thumb. Then he placed it lightly in her own, before separating the space between them once more. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit all over the place, but I hope you all enjoy it! It took me a while to get back into writing this fic, and I had to start with rewriting what was there, but I guess all the time we've had recently has helped me reinvest in this story. Please enjoy and do leave comments! I love reading them all. Thank you xox

The interrogation, and it's pertinent success in discovering the threat to Rey, was next on Kylo's mind. In strides that lengthened with singular intent, determination eclipsed his focus until there was nothing but whoever had stood beyond Rey's door last night, whoever had threatened her with her mind. 

He near growls, remembering her fear, her terror. Rey walks beside him, blindfolded, her elbow resting in its familiar position within his careful hand as they pass crew members. She tries to match his long, purposed strides towards the observation room, stumbling short when she can't quite gauge his steps. They were close, the thoughts of the five men she'd seen before just on the other side of the wall, awaiting her judgement.

Through Kylo's mind she knows the doors between her and those men are closed, which she notes with some relief, but the main assurance of her safety was the man beside her. Kylo’s mood swings didn’t cease to alarm her, regardless of her apt ability to read them. He had changed so quickly in her room, torn between pieces of his past and violent futures. She’d find some way, after this, to assure him. Of what exactly, she'd assure him, she didn’t know. She knew he mistook her fear for a fear of him. She felt many things, but it wasn’t that. Her mind flits back to only this morning, the way his body responded to her dreams, tightening like a string moments from release. It felt good, but it was near painful, feeling that something better a meer embrace of his arms or one shift of her hips. She looks to his thoughts now, though perhaps she's lucky his intents are all hell-bent on this interrogation. He didn't seem to like it when he caught her thinking of him that way, of not only his body but his gentility. She wouldn't always be able to hide it.

This, whatever connected them, was becoming more complicated. It was stronger still than anything she had known before. Had she really never been around a person long enough to see them the way she saw Kylo? She doesn’t think long to know the answer, but something more gnaws at her there.

They turn a corner, deeper into the pipework hallways of the sub. She’s mapped it out in her mind now: every bend and doorway. Between her room and the observation area, there were twelve doorways and three bends. They were close now.

“Kylo?” She whispers, hearing the new minds around her with heightened clarity, and with them, another complication. “Something’s wrong.” 

Halting, Kylo faces her, possibilities streaming through their connection in images to her mind. At the first hint of danger, he wanted her armed. She shakes her head; there was no immediate danger, from what she could tell. “Their voices, I can hear them, but not the one who tried to get in last night.” 

Kylo lets go of her elbow. She reaches to pull her blindfold down, letting it rest around her neck. 

“How do you know?” 

“Every mind has a different voice. None of them match.” Her brows knit together, her mind reaching out for further voices. She hadn't noticed it the night before, its distinctness from the ones she's seen so far on the ship. Though she knows her powers only reach a room or two at most, she tries again, but the gravity of Kylo’s mind eclipses her senses. “This isn’t working,” she grunts, frustrated. “I, I have to be closer. I could look, if we search the ship, but…” she loses her train of thought, unaware of the way Kylo’s scowl deepens beside her, cool and calculated. 

“No,” there’s a hard, resolute edge to his voice. “We already lost our one advantage. The man we’re looking for was supposed to be one of the five in there,” he glances to the wall of the observation room, pacing his thoughts out to the only resolution they need. “Now, it could be almost anyone. You’re not safe as long as you’re here.” 

In her lungs, Rey’s breathing quickens. Did he mean to say that she would leave? His thoughts sift through more images, one more than others surfaces repeatedly, already mapping out her escape route with Hux and their team to Malta, where she'd hide and wait or leave, though Kylo expected the latter with more surity, that she'd leave him. She snaps at him, her eyes a sudden flare of annoyance. “Seriously? I’m not leaving.” When she says it, she knows it's true, and it's because of him. A sliver of hesitation remains, wondering if she had just turned down her chance for freedom, and he sees it. 

He exhales sharply, shaking his head as he resumes their pace, his hand guiding her lower back, less gentle this time. “You have to,” he answers, the harshness in his tone cutting. They pass the doors to the observation room, his lengthened strides pulling them towards the escape pods. 

“No!” Rey wrenches away from him, teeth bared. She will not be alone. Not again. “Not without you.” 

His steps toward her falls short, their bodies stilled a foot apart from each other. He’s stunned, unsure if he heard her right. Kylo looks away, his voice thick as he speaks, “You don’t mean that. You need to leave.” 

“_Don’t_ tell me what I do or don’t mean,” she hisses, shoving his solid chest with both hands. It doesn’t move him an inch. “Look at me.” 

The command in her voice is tangible, and it would inspire fear were his mind less occupied. He hardly has room in his pounding brain to wonder if she’s controlling him. He thinks she’s not, but it doesn’t matter. What finally draws Kylo in to obey her is his damned heart, clawing at the hope that her words hold more than ulterior motives. 

Her eyes don’t release their sharpness when he complies with her order. Her chin lifts proudly, and he knows he was a fool to look away. 

“You want me safe? Then stay with me.” She says, every word a cutting edge. Whatever she can think to say that would wear him down and bring him closer, she’ll say it. 

“I know why you’re really here, in this vessel, going nowhere. I know what it is you really want. It’s not science or truth or power,” she near spits the final word, raining shame with her tongue. “There's more beneath this mash and these clothes you wear than pain and hurt. People are not weapons. Neither are you, Kylo Ren.” Something snaps within him as she steps closer, a stark fury blazing from her eyes that bore into his from beneath dark lashes.

Her voice lowers, the flames becoming embers, wrapped in warmth. “I feel it too. I’m the only one who’ll ever bring you closer to understanding what you are, and if you can control it. And you,” she wets her lip, as if to stop herself from saying another word. But he hears it anyway, what he is to her, and it nearly makes his heart soar. Her hand extends, the palm angled to hold his face.

Gently, he takes her wrist by the sleeve, halting her advance. 

“You know I can’t give you what you want,” he murmurs, but he can hear the defeat in his own voice. She wanted him to stay with him, and though he said he couldn't, he knows he's already surrendered his will to her. Where she wants him, he will go. 

And as long as she'll have him, he'll be there. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been to Malta. That won't stop me from writing an all-out lover's retreat on the ancient islands. Food (and actual) porn coming up. And beach swims. <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry! I promised immediate arrival to Malta, but there were scenes I couldn't pass up. 
> 
> A lot happens here so I may be back for edits. I've been so encouraged by you guys I had to keep writing. So here it is: a conspiracy unfolds, a plane ride awaits. Thank you guys again and please enjoy!

Poe Dameron taps his fingers on his thigh, absently chewing his nail as he stares down the silent comm-radio in the Wardroom. Ren had just called him on it, short-tempered as ever, streaming through plan changes like they were machine gun ammo. It was chaotic, to say the least, but he could keep up. The woman had sensed someone outside her room yesterday - a threat - confirming Poe’s suspicions. Then he had requested they be allowed to leave Odysseus after Hux's medical crew, which Poe gladly permitted. They, Ren, the girl, both posed an unsettling force to his and some other crew members' secret resistance. But now they were both absent, a slight burden lifting from his shoulders. Hux's absence, on the other hand… 

A sharp pain twists in his gut, like a knife to his conscience. He should have anticipated something like this happening. Hux had been growing more suspicious, and Ren more flighty. Something to do with the girl. He saw the way Ren looked at her. The way Hux smiled to himself, observing their reports. It had thrown a wrench in their plans. 

An ache from sitting onslaughts his leg, so Poe stands, opening the door to the conn-room. He surveys the muted whir of controls and lights as they blink in their ordained manner. It was not enough to help him focus. The cool shower water hardly lasts long against the warmth of the engine room. Before long beads of sweat threaten his forehead, never fully emerging. He shakes his head wearily, like an exhausted soldier. A bitter laugh escapes him. Wasn’t he getting ready to start a war? He finds himself behind Finn’s desk, a hand clasped to the man’s shoulder, a silent summon. 

Finn moves when the pressure of his hand slips away, standing to lean on his conn board and enter one final comm sequence. Rose will see it and meet them. He leaves; when the door closes, Poe begins to count. Two hundred Mississippi. After a final circuit through the conn tower, he leaves as well. 

The hallways are empty. Ren and that woman - Rey, had just left the hatch. Poe might have had his motives, but he’d obey Ren’s request to place the sub under a low-level lockdown. No one would be allowed to leave beside the two of them and Hux. He’s careful to walk the long route to the Wardroom, taking his time. When he opens the door, he spies two clasped hands resting on the wooden tabletop, their fingers interlaced. 

Rose’s voice drifts to his ears when he opens the door, though she doesn’t stop, not minding Poe when he enters, “You should have been more careful,” she says to Finn, “if that mind-reader had seen you when she escaped to the engine room -”

“I know,” Finn places his other hand atop of hers, his thumb drawing soothing circles into the back of her hand. “I had to check on Kaydel and the others, they could have been caught if someone noticed them flouting the protocols. We’d be in just as much danger if even one of them had been compromised.” Rose nods shakily, finally looking up to Poe. He seats himself to Finn’s left, leaving them in the corner seat just beneath the sepia photograph of their last swim call, a different time. Even in shades of brown, the moment in the picture comes through dazzling, with crew men's smiles beaming up as they bob in the water. Even Ren is there, feet in the water, watching on as the crew swims through the open ocean. It reminds him of simpler times before their lives here became something so much more than any of them had expected. 

An uncomfortable silence settles in the moments that follow, their thoughts all flitting to Hux. Finn and Rose had both heard his screams from their stations. And Poe…

A sharp exhale leaves him, tanned hands that tremble cover his face as if trying to press the cracks of his confident facade together again. “What have I done?” Rose’s hand slipped from Finn’s as she leaned across the table, the pressure of her hand against his sleeve firm but comforting.

“Only what needed to be done,” she said solemnly.

At her words, Poe shakes his head. Cold, agonizing images flash before his shielded eyes. They don’t start so painful: Hux’s hand on his bare bicep, warm and unflinching. It is Poe’s hands, however, that betray him, blackening his thoughts. His hands reach out towards Hux when Kylo’s figure appears in the doorway, oblivious to the part he’s about to play. The muscles in the attached forearms hesitate, dread making them heavy. But resolve drives his hands forward, so quickly Hux doesn’t realize what pushed him, what sends him into Ren’s lethal touch. 

Finn’s eyes see through the pain and shame, so he speaks, drawing his friend back to the present. “Poe. You know this was the only way. He will be alright.” Poe looks up, reason collecting behind his features, pressing his lips into a hard line. 

“I know,” he says, and then a second time, to convince himself. “I know.” His hands drop from his face, his body straightening as his composure returns. “It had to be done. Even Hux was getting suspicious. Rose’s contact on the Hermes doesn’t know what their telegram even said, it could have been anything…” 

Even as he says it, Poe knows that they had no other choice. They sit in silence again. It’s been two weeks since they had any orders from Amilyn. When they got the order to smuggle Kaydel and her band of Spartacus revolutionaries to Cyprus, he didn’t have any time to forge files or backstories for them. Now their whole operation was in danger of being discovered. Any slip up could do it: the Hermes telegram could have held revealing information about any number of their recent smuggling trips; Ren could have figured out none of the recent “abnormally powered” case files were legitimate. Or better yet, Snoke’s actual placement of a mind-reading freak in their ship could pick up on their conspiracy with a single glance. He hoped not. He had kept his distance. 

“What about Ren and the girl?” Finn asks quietly, as if seeing his thoughts. “You should have told us before you went to her.” 

Finn’s right. Yesterday had been a close call. He had almost shot a woman, had deliberated killing her for an ungrounded fear that she’d reveal them all. How could he assume her life so flippantly? 

His memories trickle along the moment he met her, an instant so brief he had doubted its existence. It had happened when he was on furlough near their naval base in Gibraltar, a year or so ago, before he had Finn and Rose. This woman was there, and where she went, rumors followed. He had been seated at a bar by the beach, nursing a whiskey in one hand a smoke in the other. She’ll read your mind, that one. The old Spanish sailor beside him released his cigar smoke in the air around them, its smell a cloud around him and his glinting eyes. Poe didn’t bother with superstitions, when he was sober, at least. On his fourth glass of single-malt, however, he was completely indignant of any old sea-tales. 

The woman hid her face, sneaking into the bar to use the telephone at the back. Not five minutes later the military police appeared to arrest her. Drunkenly, he stared down the woman in custody, her eyes searing into the onlookers around her. For some reason, they stilled on him.

Not a word had passed between them, just an uneasy glance. He wouldn’t give it another thought. It was only when she showed up in Ren’s backseat, blindfolded and in chains, did he remember, too late to change a thing. He did, however, change one thing. He would not be the one to shed her blood before reason was given. 

“I -” he nods in agreement, meeting Finn’s eye. “It won’t happen again. I know enough people have been hurt, trying to keep this operation running.” He says it more for Finn and Rose than for himself. He knows their sympathies, particularly Finn’s, his aversion to bloodshed a part of him, inseparable. They made a promise not to take lives, one he won’t break, unless… 

“We have to remember that Snoke’s orders brought this woman here. That is no mistake.-” Poe lets the implicit vow beneath his words hang there, before he stands to leave. They’ve been here too long. 

He reaches for the door handle, a clear signal that their meeting is finished. Finn’s actions speak otherwise, however, for it's him who breaks the silence. 

“You will not try to hurt her, again,” he says, slowly and clearly, his teeth bared. Anger pours off of him, and Rose glances between him and Poe nervously. “You don’t know that she’s a threat.”

Poe stills his hand under the threat of leaving his friends. But he does turn; his own anger, his own position, fighting to be known. 

“Neither of you seemed to mind the cost when you said Hux had to go,” his words rush like fire, and he points a finger at them both. They won't look at him, not when they have each other and he might lose someone he loves. “And I did what had to be done. Even though I didn’t want it. So no. We don’t know that she’s a threat,” his voice settles into a murmur. “Not yet.” 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

1920: Midmorning, Hermes Flight Deck 

They had just left the hatch. All it had taken was her word, and there he was beside her. She walked free as ever, a borrowed uniform pressed and clinging well to her frame. No blindfolds or hand-bindings. Their aim was low-profile. Although Hermes were allies, they weren't privy to the types of project Odysseus had going on just beneath azure waters and thick steel. And now the sun shines overhead, a mounting threat on the late morning sky. Soon it will be as hot as the day Kylo had met her, a day both bone-dry and merciless. Only here the dryness was not wrought by the land, that cutting desert where not four days before this morning, the woman beside him had been a stranger. This time, despite an ocean’s swell at their feet, the air is drier still. That, he knows, is for the winds, pouring off the Adriatic in summer tides that seemed to carry whispers of ancient myths and prophecies. The winds are yet unchanging. By high noon it made parched creatures of them all, trapped in gusts of salt and heat. 

He sets his strides to guide Rey’s, her eyes wide as she looks to the ship's titanic structure. Allowing her time to openly stare at the armaments that tower from the carrier’s self-imposed skyline, he slows their pace. He could look with her, but his gaze rests on her instead, mixed with the unmoving thoughts of myths and stories wrought on by the winds. Were these not the very waters where Paul had met the storm that wrought salvation to his imprisoners? Or where the great Odysseus of legend had found his siren? Or she had found him, Kylo was beginning to wonder. 

The commanding admiral of the Hermes had permitted the altered use of their second evac plane for Kylo and his noted assistant. The seven or so men Kylo had abruptly removed from their jobs would have to wait for their relocations. Across the flight deck, the hangar waits - the gaping maw of its entrance thick with the smell of fuel as Kylo and Rey come near. The sound of mechanical tinkering echoes inside the metal cavern, a few scattered engineers at work beneath the helms of varied biplanes and prototypes. Rey eyes them with a dubious glance; nervously seeking a corner in the hangar hiding something more promising in the way of aircraft. 

Sensing Rey’s slight unease, Kylo rests his hand between her shoulder blades, the boldness of his reassurance surging its warmth through her. He offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile, but it comes across as more of a twinge in his lips before his hand retreats, as if burned. Not all would tell it’s a smile by seeing it; it's more a gleam that lifts the storms that brew in his eyes. Yes, Rey decides that’s how she would describe it. She finds herself smiling in return, though unsure of herself. 

Kylo surveys her, and sighs, turning away as they walk through the hangar. By the way his heart picks up, he would think he is in great danger. 

They come across the corner another crewman had directed them towards. There, a woman in dirtied overalls rises from her work under a biplane engine to greet them, stepping out of her semicircle of tools. Her dark eyes and lean face strike Kylo as familiar, even beneath the grime and sweat. He nods to her in slight, and she offers a short reply in return, “Doctor Ren. The admiral assigned me to pilot you both to Malta.” She casts aside a rag used to clean her hand, extending it to him with a glint of knowing in her eyes. He would not take it. 

“We’ve met before,” he grunts, recognition slowly returning to him, “you’re Rose’s sister, Paige.” 

The woman drops her hand indifferently, neither affirming or denying his revelation. He knows it’s her. She once had a file similar to her sister, only she had no aptitudes that would have prompted the project to recruit her. 

Paige turns away, patting the top wing of what was evidently her biplane, its metal responding with a dull thunk. Kylo glances to Rey, pleased to see her worries settle at the sight of a well-assembled plane. Her gaze passes over the unique, open structure as her steps take her to the back-section, her fingers ghosting over the tailpiece and its rudder. The craft’s body held no cabin, but the structure looked trustworthy enough. She counts a pilot seat, in addition to a larger cavity in the body of the plane, its corners donned with two metal stands. Consternation pricks her brow at the hallowed space behind the pilot’s seat, curiosity pulling her gaze back to the others. “What are these for?” 

Her voice rings out to Kylo, but he is too caught up in his inspection of the plane to see her thoughts. Kylo grunts, finding a less-than-satisfactory bolt attaching a propeller to the mainframe. He places his hand on it, ensuring no eyes are on him before he tightens the industrial bolt with his bare fingers. 

“ - Spartan Enterprises built this model. They routed the gunning sequence so as not to intercept the tailpiece, these sensors here -” Paige’s voice drifts to him through the plane rafters. He feels Rey’s interest pique through their connection, but what he sees elicits a groan. 

“No,” he shakes his head, hair falling uncombed against his cheek. He rakes a hand through it, then one more time for good measure. It does nothing to soothe his rising stress. With lumbering strides he reaches them, registering the object of Rey’s interest, the gunners’ cavity. “Are you serious?” he near barks, patience thinning in wait for Paige to answer. “Ms. Tico -”

“It’s Officer Tico,” Paige folds her arms, leveling his glare. “Take it or leave it. I’m not flying a machine that takes another three barrels of fuel just to transport two people. Neither is the admiral,” she stands a bit taller, adjusting her overalls. “Your assistant has no issue with it,” she deadpans. 

Rey simply shrugs, her amusement at his beratement carefully hidden beneath her schooled expression. Beneath the surface of their connection, however, it’s as apparent to Kylo as daylight. “This will help us make the trip in good time, _Doctor Ren_.” 

Kylo’s frown deepens, meeting two sets of eyes that aren’t on his side. Best not to fight and lengthen their time here. Rey grins, either for seeing or influencing his acceptance, Kylo can’t tell. He lets his eyes sweep over her. In the low light of the hangar, her hair looks darker than it really is, the sunlight in her features accentuated. 

It makes her skin look soft. 

He swallows thickly. “Wind. We need wind wear.” 

Paige steps aside from them before he can think of more conditions to place on their travel arrangement. When she comes back, it's with a simple brown duffle bag to answer his request. She tosses it onto the floor between Kylo and Rey before placing her tools one by one in a toolbox. Excusing herself, she takes her absence, with only a suggestion they be ready when she returns. 

It’s just him and Rey again, though several feet part them, and for her presence, his anxieties flit to the gunner’s pit. Once he takes a knee, kneeling to rifle through the bag’s aviating apparel, Rey takes a step closer. 

“Kylo?” Her voice wrapped around his name sends a twinge of warmth through his veins, threatening to consume him. She kneels beside him, the cool of her breath brushes his skin, drawing his focus to her lips, to her. “Kylo, you’re upset.” She whispers softly. 

Returning to himself, he breathes again. Rey senses that she’s the cause of his unease, but she would calm it if he would let her. “No, Rey. I -” his words escape him shakily; he won’t let her blame herself for this. Huffing, he shakes his head, rising to his feet. His hands still clutch the leather cap, his thumb drawing circles through its straps slowly. 

“All my life, I’ve lived only one way. It is all I know,” he sighs, the deep cadence of his voice filling the space between them. Rey’s heart hammers in her chest as she sees it, what he shows her. His uncle’s labs, the trenches, all of it. Every moment he’s ever lived beside another had been at a distance she could hardly measure. Tears prick her eyes as she watches him struggle to come to words. “I don’t know how to be… how to be close anymore.”

She opens her lips, speechless. She had heard him say this, but it feels as if for the first time she could truly listen. Her thoughts skim the moments between them, her dreams and hands, her questions that probed him relentlessly. Perhaps she had not realized the force with which she had been pressing against his barriers. Perhaps it was too much… 

“Rey,” her name leaves his lips like a prayer, almost silent. His sadness surrounds her, not for any attempt to drown her in it, but merely a call to be understood. Still, she sees something in it she can only describe as light, an intent to protect her. “I’ll - I’ll try. I know you want more than I can give you,” his words remind her of the ones he had said just minutes before, when they were still beneath the ocean. He had been thinking of her dreams then, the ones that touched him in places left covered. 

Kylo shifts his balance, uncertainty growing under the sudden weight of her emotion. She takes a tentative step closer, and his hands flinch. But in her mind, he sees that he doesn’t need to shield himself, not from her. 

Rey stoops to the bag at his feet, shuffling through until she finds what she is looking for. His mind can hardly process her intentions as she pulls a bomber jacket from the pile, sliding it over her shoulders with simple resolve. He considers her openly, her emotions becoming clearer through their connection. How could a man who knows nothing about her, whose touch would be only fatal, earn her compassion so? He couldn’t. 

Two dark gloves lay atop the pile, and she snatches them up as well, pulling them delicately over her hands and tucking the edges into the wrists of the jacket. He looks in her eyes. Their wide curiosity makes her brave, fearless. 

She reaches out, grasping both of his hands with her gloved fingers. He lets her, awe eclipsing him as she lifts them, trapping them in her careful touch. Rey keeps herself calm, but the boldness is fading fast. She clutches their hands together, placing their curled palms together over her heart. 

He braces himself against the shock, staring deep into the golden fields of her eyes. Rey’s heart runs beneath the sides of his hands, curled in hers. A polygraph could not bring him this, this twisted sensation that enraptures him to the thud of her heart. She supplies her heartbeat, quick but steady, as if the light in her eyes and the bond between them would not show him enough that she’ll do it, she’ll let him have his way. 

“They were just dreams,” she holds their hands steady - her fingers had begun to tremble. Rey changes the direction of her words with a clear of her throat, lowering his hands once more. He almost wishes she hadn’t. “I won’t ever force you to do anything you... you wouldn't want. I won't hurt you like that.”

Her meaning is not lost on him, though something strange and twisted surges in him. How could she be the one wanting to protect him? Him, whose body could offer no comfort or refuge to her. She won't hurt _him_. He sees it now, the way she looks past his apparent invincibility. All this time, he's feared she would close the distance between them in each moment of temptation. Or that it would be him to move, to swallow the space with his touch. 

Kylo does not move, he merely looks at her with his intense gaze. His eyes almost gleam with gratitude, though she cannot discern her own emotions from his. There’s a calm her words bring them both, but there’s something else. Another sensation lingers beneath, magnetic and volatile, like a distant storm that could bring rain or ruin. 

He nods, those black eyes two pristine stones of onyx, touched with light that resembled stars. Those eyes offer his understanding: what she feels, he feels it too. He takes a step back, though not evasively, as she might have seen it before. The step he takes is small, taken merely to appraise her jacket and gloves. 

Rey sees herself through his eyes, the careful consideration they take of her uniform, cautiously moving before they can linger. She wonders if she should leave him alone to his thoughts, if she can. Nervously, she smooths down her trousers, their ends tucked into the men’s knee-high boots that feel too loose towards the front, even with two pairs of Kylo’s socks beneath them. His eyes drift to the sun-lit strands of hair that cascade down to her shoulders, golden, untied and free. It allows the breeze that billows to move a few strands out of place, and his hand twitches. The sight of her face framed so reminds him of something more that she needs, and he bends once more to search through the duffel’s contents. 

Watching the slow rhythm of his movements with curiosity, Rey swallows when his hands find the object they seek, his thoughts broadcasting to her his intentions to step closer once more. A leather pilot’s cap, along with a blue scarf and flight goggles, fit easily in his hands. 

“You’ll need these.” With that, he turns away, away from the warmth her body emanates. She dresses with what he gave her as he does the same, finding Paige had not underestimated his jacket size. 

It’s been years since he has done this, in an open-structured craft, no less. Rey has never done this at all. He checks his gloves once more, spying their pilot as she strides towards them, overalls changed for pilot’s wear. 

Paige takes a steep step onto the biplane’s wing, leaning into the pilot’s seat to undo the breaks. With a look over her shoulder, she deems them ready, nodding to Rey. “You can bring me the duffle. I have a storage space under the seat here.” She jumps down, holding her hands out. 

Her excitement growing, she swings the bag towards Paige’s open arms, the woman taking it deftly as her smile grows. She’s no longer afraid to fly. There’s a slight quirk at the corner of Kylo’s mouth when he sees it

In turn, Paige throws the bag into the seat, calling out to them both. “Get behind the wings. We’re pushing her out.” 

\-- 

By the runway, the engines run with roaring power. The turn of the propeller blades rumbles like peals of thunder. The last piece of equipment they had needed was headphones, which Paige delegated down to them from her seat at the front. They both slipped them on, and Paige made final sound checks. The scarf Rey wears ends in just above her chin, her pink lips beaming as his voice comes through the headphones, completing his own soundcheck. Her smile’s entrancing, and full. He only hopes that her lips would not be sunburned in the next four hours they flew.

The sun’s arc would descend soon, and as they ascended the air would be cooler. But its light was brutal still. As he had anticipated, the heat has grown near unbearable, though there are other reasons that sweat pricks his brow - namely, the seat. 

Yes, the plane could fly three, but it demanded proximity. The part of him that thrived to finally be at this moment, anticipating the warmth of Rey so close to him, was greater than he thought. Let his will to keep indifference be stronger, he nearly prayed. 

A particularly cutting gust of wind sweeps the flight deck, its power fading as it swirled around them, and his gloved hand rests on the metal sheets that have begun to bake under the sun.

Wordlessly, Rey covers his hand with hers, affirming him of her readiness, and of his. She would take the front part of the cavity, leaving room to fit his legs beside her. The space faced the tail end of the plane, equipped with two guns aimed to take down any chasers. 

Here and now, however, there weren’t going to be any dogfights. The only gunfire seemed contained to the cavity in his chest, unceasing in rapidity.

He sighs, face set sharp in determination, removing his hand from beneath hers gently. “Stand here and lift your knee, facing away,” he instructs, pointing in front of him.

A thrill of intuition shoots through Rey, and she can’t contain her nervous gulp as she steps to stand before him, her back to his chest. She lifts her knee, her foot hovering in the air. 

The way she senses his body as he places himself firmly behind her sinks warmth into the pit of her stomach. Although the comm links connect them, the way she reacts prompts him an inch closer to her ear, not dangerously, he reasons. Almost. “Trust me,” he urges, so softly he doesn’t recognize himself. His voice comes through the comm link, but it's close vibrations stir the hair beneath her covered neck. 

She barely contains an involuntary shiver. “I do - gah!” 

Suddenly her body is in the air, an impossible power hoisting her by the sole of her raised foot. She flies up and into the gunner’s seat, her muscles taking control as she turns her body, setting herself into the space there. 

He leans towards her to offer a steadying hand, as she grasps her bearings. When she’s placed, she looks down to him, a wild laugh escaping from her throat in a single scoff. “This is… it’s so high!” 

Kylo’s lip quirks as cool, unfamiliar pride runs through him. It’s remarkably easy to forget the fear he had felt for the look of pure joy spreading over her face. “Yes,” he agrees soundly. She looks away, feeling the thin stretch of his amused smile through their connection. 

When she settles, he climbs into the seat. Her legs fit into the space available; they extend almost fully, so he knows he’ll have to bend his knees. Kylo sucks in a breath as he slides into the space for his torso behind her, his back against the cushioned surface a foot or two from the back of Paige’s. Rey readjusts, leaning into the space between them as he reaches around her, clasping and tightening the various belts that keep them secured.

His hands are so large, sure and encompassing, muddling her thoughts as she blinks down at them. She feels his effort to still their trembling as nerves creep through the muscles and tendons of his arms, threatening his control. But his touch sears through the layers they donn, both gentle and compelling, challenging her not to tremble herself. 

When the buckles are fastened, his arms retreat from the space they held around her. But he doesn’t pull them back fully, either, resting them tentatively on his own legs, his wrists resting near the crook of her jacket-concealed waist. 

Regaining his focus over the roar of the blades, he peers back to the pilot seat. “No loops on this ride, Officer,” Kylo says sternly over the comm line, “ I doubt these safety belts are built for two,” he mutters. 

“Copy that,” Paige smirks to herself from the front, turning the plane into place over the runway. 

Rey breathes deeply, a nervous laugh rumbling in her chest at the ridiculous image he’s conjured of their plane in loops. He can’t laugh, himself, the image holding a sliver of fear, even if it's irrational. But her laughter echoes between the space where they press their bodies, its cadence musical to him.

Paige’s voice cuts through the comm, “Tower One this is Vengeance. Affirming ready position, awaiting your go.”

“Copy that, Tico. runway’s yours.” A man’s voice echoes through the line, disappearing with a switch as Paige flips some controls, pressing the wheel forward. Although they face the tailpiece, the jolt away from the runway’s start sparks fresh excitement in Rey’s limbs. She curls her arms around herself, just to contain it. 

They gain speed, faster and faster, the structures around them blur into greys and blues as concrete and metal fuse to sky. 

Shock alights in the nerves around the soles of her feet, curling her toes in their too-big boots. As her body separates from the horizon line, ascending, and her hands grip Kylo’s where their grip tightens at her waist, not anticipating her sudden move. In a flash the ship disappears beneath them, and out of sight as they ascend, their pilot’s control turning them north. 

Rey’s breath escapes her, her head falling back against Kylo’s chest, overjoyed. His fingers relax against her, although he probes, his thoughts questioning her wellness. Perhaps she was in shock. She shakes her head lightly, her meaning imbedded in the slips of thought that form between them. She couldn’t be happier. 

\-- 

For thrill coursing through Rey’s veins, he did not anticipate the wind would lull her thusly, closer to sleep. The sky was a different landscape, so clear the feathered ends of white clouds were all but scattered by the winds. Although the cold had increased tenfold, as if they were cutting through ice, the sun’s threat was still palpable on her skin. At Kylo’s reminder, she lifts her scarf over her lips and cheeks, tucking it away into her cap that keeps the wind from snatching it away. 

She had not ceased to watch the horizon, her awe a tangible weight between them, but even her excitement had left her exhausted. He was the only one with proper back support, but a slight smirk arose to find her content with his chest. She found herself pouring energy into just containing how content she was. 

“You should sleep,” he murmurs, his words unobserved by Paige as she flew the vessel calmly and silently. He noticed her effort at something, perhaps her determination to absorb her first flight, the moments that spanned from its beginning to its end. And yet, they had hours to go before she needed to be awake. She answers by merely groaning into his chest, her battle with sleep already at a loss. 

They lay that way a while, and he counts the clouds. The expanse of her lungs settles into that rhythm that is distinctively hers. Only a night on her bedroom floor had told him that, but perhaps it's more. A sense of safety envelopes him as the minutes she sleeps drift into hours. In the occasional, quick glances to her face, he can tell her sleep is undisturbed by the engines and the wind. He knows she’s spent recent nights asleep in Syria’s war zones. The sounds of war desensitized him in his own time, many sounds became a whisper, and he can focus on one or two. And fade away. 

He does not allow himself to sleep just now, however. There’s a clearness of mind he’s restless for, a peace he needs to chase. It is not for having more freedom from their connection to think openly. He does not care for that so much anymore, his relationship to their bond had never been one of acceptance, but of almost privilege. Except for moments like these, moments when they were so close he could smell her. 

He adjusts her so that his arm can support her better, relieving the ache in one of his legs as he moves it. She sighs into his chest when he shifts, fitting into his chest and shoulder, her legs curl closer towards them. Her eyelids flutter, but she does not awaken. The movement, however, exposes her nape to a different current of wind, one that tugs colors of hair from her cap, whipping in the cool air around them. 

Its softness brushes his lips, and he holds his breath, every nerve on fire. Surely she would be screaming now? As her body shows no change, the tension in his limbs relaxes. Only slightly. Being a scientist, he should have expected that hair wouldn’t transmit his powers the way that skin did. But he would never test it. 

Relief courses through him, and he inhales, incredulous at himself as he takes another breath. She is dusk and spice and sun. But he stops. He couldn’t let this last. It would only foster a yearning for more. 

He shifts again, his left arm nearly cradling her upper body and he moves, his hand tilting her head gently to the side. From there, he can reach better, and he brings his right hand to the nape of her neck. Bidden by the richly colored locks, he takes them in his fingers, his touch awkward through the gloves. He flexes his wrist backward, beginning a twisting motion that coils her hair loosely. With another movement of his hand, he tucks it back into her cap, lifting her back to her place against him when her hair is free from the gale’s tangles. 

His breath comes hoarsely, as if he had not used his lungs in many years, unfamiliar sensations swirling around him in a violent storm. He sits up, but the movement bids him realize exactly why his heart is hammering so. It’s a different heat that lights his blood, the kind that strangles, forbidden. The kind that swells. 

She adjusts her weight, eliciting a small gasp as her body reclines further, leaning just so against his member. Remembering himself, or rather, his comm line with Paige, he yanks the microphone away from his face, relief coursing through him when the pilot doesn’t respond to his outburst. Another flash of memory pushes him to do the same for Rey’s, and he moves it away from her face as well. A furious blush reddens his face, his ears, his reasons grounded in the thought of the sounds she might make if she had any more… vivid dreams. 

He has to calm down. 

A breath or two centers him, and the memory of Rey’s hand pressed to his chest resurfaces, searing heat into the cloth over his lungs, his heart. He checks Rey’s reaction, her temperature fine despite the cold of the atmosphere. And he finds himself thankful again for the wind apparel, for more reasons than one. 

But the reasons fade to questions, questions he has no answers to. What is it that brought him here? To this space hardly wide or long enough for their legs? This thing, this thread between them - every moment they touched it unraveled him, even in her dreams. But something in her had responded to his fear when he saw the gun-seat, no matter how desperately he had tried to hide it away, as he’d always done. But it didn’t just unravel him. It re-threaded, then and there, around him. He had never felt so whole before, not since -

“_Ben._”

A cold flame ignites in his veins, his spine straightening to the soft voice at his chest. All concern for his surroundings abandons him. A choke threatens his breath, anger and betrayal sending him reeling even as he sits beneath her, paralyzed.

_ Why? _

She stirs, a shadow etching its gloom into her dreams as his countenance darkens. He exhales heavily, shaking with the effort to remain composed, but fails. Rey has seen… has heard… 

His grip loosens when he feels it, a twinge of pain from her, its discomfort flashing where his hands had laid on her waist. He had _hurt her_. 

All thoughts of wholeness are shattered. His mind blanks, failing to fix the pieces of himself he left long ago, the self had never wanted. Fleeing her side, his hands grip the sides of the seat, where they’re whipped by the high winds. A shred of pain to what he feels for almost hurting her. More than he already had. 

What she had said still ricochets within him. Yet he must remind himself all the same. Ben was dead. There were little to no parts of him that had not died beneath Luke’s experiments, when for years the weight of a hundred lives had been placed by his uncle’s precious science before him, forcing their skin against his to see if this time, yes this time, his touch wouldn’t kill them. All that was Ben amounted to nothing. That name belonged to a slave. 

This truth, for as long as he had known it, had branded him beyond recognition, had closed him off to the world, both physically and mentally. Now, there was her, the borders of her mind permeating his own, sensing what he didn’t want to be there.

With a grunt, his head falls back against the metal behind him, the dull thud of it insufficient for shutting out his demons. 

“Doctor Ren? Did something happen back there?” Paige’s voice ripples through the comm link, and he rushes to readjust his mouth-piece. 

“We’re fine,” he grits his teeth, lids screwed tight. 

“Okay. We’re almost there.” 

He doesn’t answer, catching his breath as he slumps less forcefully against the metal. The colors around him reign his thoughts to the different blues of sky and sea. Neither are calming. There’s a part of him that almost draws him to the colors in her dreams instead. But her dreams are not just colors but names. _His_ name, and the life within him now suddenly burns with a rawness he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

Something is happening, he’s sure of it, and it terrifies him. 

He needed answers, but this was not the time or place to demand them. As their plane descends low enough for him to spy the specks of fisherman’s boats along the water, Kylo’s thoughts race like the wind. The fear and anger he has known for years rise like misty shadows within him, unfurling, roiling as they collide and disintegrate and shift into new forms - forms like hers. 

Huffing, he shakes his head, bracing the wind to look over his shoulder to the distant shores of Malta, their white cliffs creeping into distinction from the abounding blue. The gales dry his eyes to tears, but he doesn’t dare close them, focusing on their sting, on the pain within him.

This is how he escapes, how he relieves the ache. What hope he had he crushes; that is ample punishment, he reasons. So he lets himself turn back towards her. 

Under his breath he mutters a curse, scolding for lingering gazes and wandering thoughts. The moment she uttered his name it all came crashing down. Promise or no promise to try, for her… 

They’ve made so many of those to each other, too many. That he would protect her, that he would not leave her or keep her away; that she would help him carry his curse, this curse he carried in his skin. But so much had changed. He stares at his hands: so much has also remained the same.

Malta is beneath them now, an archipelago of greens and yellows in the passing arid islands. Soon the colors will turn to Valletta’s sandstone streets, built close and confining. He smells the air, opens his mouth just to breathe. 

Who he was, who Kylo Ren was, was changing. Until there were answers, he has to forget who waits in sleep between his arms. He would not forget his commitment to her or his promises. No, only the ones she had made to him, and the touches she gave to seal them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading! 
> 
> The islands of Malta sit south of the Italian island of Sicily. In biblical times, Malta was a point of recovery for the Apostle Paul after the shipwreck that halted his journey to Rome. The crew taking him to trial before the emperor all survived, but their ship was blown to pieces by a storm. 
> 
> The Greek hero Odysseus' travels were supposedly in the Aegean, but I like a Greek reference nonetheless. 
> 
> Paige's bipalne is an early prototype, like the models flown by the Wright Brothers. The lightweight structure allows for quick travel, and with some botched science, I'll say it's quick enough to give our couple a few days before Odysseus catches up. 
> 
> Updates to follow soon <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading! Here is the newest/longest chapter up to date.

Golden sunlight glances down gently from the open windows of Valletta, a garden of marble and sandstone that glows like ivory. From the dirt and gravel runway, she can just see parts of it shine in the waning light of day, but she cannot hear it from where she lays. With _ whom _ she lays. 

Their pilot must have cut the engines, she surmises, for the whirring of the propellers slows from a roar to steady hum as they slow. They skirt past the sparse bits of green, the shade of trees harboring cicadas that drown the air with life. One could hardly call it silent, but there are other silences that bother her. The Tico woman had not so much as looked to her for even a moment, as if she wasn’t there. Her attention, her gaze, remained entirely focused on the man with her instead. 

Rey scoffs, shifting her shoulder blades away from Ben’s chest. She didn’t care to scrutinize another woman’s gaze, even if the man with her was its focus. Instead she perouses tree dappled space around them, dry and windy. 

The plane comes to a halt, but their pilot doesn’t cut the engines, leaving the propellers to fill the air with spinning din. 

With her movement, Kylo shifts back, gripping the sides of the plane and moving his body from beside hers as he stands on aching legs. In easy movements in his long legs, he steps down to the left side of the plane, allowing her to see his face for the first time since they took off, or his dark and distant eyes. 

Concerned, Rey sits still as her breath halts, unsure if that is the Tico woman she hears buzzing faintly through her comm set as she holds her eyes to his, waiting for him to look up. There’s something wrong, something that was so unlike the lightness she had felt radiating from him only hours before. 

He doesn’t look at her, but in his thoughts she sees his instinct fighting him. His eyes’ intense focus moves a fraction upward, but they harden before touching her gaze, and he juts out a stiff arm. “We’re good to go,” his voice is clipped, neutral, but it doesn’t fool her. Rey’s eyes narrow, perplexed at the different things swirling within him, heated, volatile, unsettling. But she takes his arm, hoping to send some gentility through that simple gesture. Perhaps a nightmare had made him so. 

Holding to it, she swings one leg and the other over the side before sliding her butt off, landing beside him. He doesn’t let the contact linger, but his eyes hold to hers still. “Officer Tico,” he yells over the propellers as he shrugs off his jacket, the snug leather peeling of his shoulders.They have an hour until the evening, and the day’s late light glows around him. She rolls her tongue in cheek, following his suit with her own gloves and wind-wear. With a nod, he hands them to Paige to tuck under her seat, and she gives them a thumbs up before steering the plane away to reposition on the runway. Although he wonders if it has enough fuel to make the run, he knows Hermes will have closed their route. The winds would be with her as well. 

Wordlessly, he guides Rey from the runway. Try as he may, there’s chaos in his head he’d like to keep at bay. A plane ride that started optimistically, to say the least, unfurled too many revelations to leave him at ease. Her hair was finer than anything he’d imagined. Her body in his arms, between his legs, was warm, soft, and strong. 

But there were worse truths, things he hardly wanted to show her. She knew his name. That old Solo name. And in his anger, he had discovered something else. He wasn’t only capable of hurting her, he had done so already. 

He quenches the thought immediately, trying to think instead of the cicada’s drumming wings around them. Quick and gleaming, a dark red automobile swerves expertly beside them, halting as its driver, a young man in British naval uniform, leans from the rolled-down window towards them. Although his looks could suggest Mediterranean heritage, he offers a hello that confirms a northern England childhood.

“Ma’am,” he nods and smiles brightly to Rey, offering a salute to her when he eyes her uniform. At his gesture she straightens, returning the salute with aplomb that impresses Kylo. “Doctor,” the man nods to him in turn, but at his greeting Kylo’s brows knit together, unsure how he knows the man. 

Perhaps eyeing his slight bemusement, the driver elaborates, “Hermes sent a telegram, and we received your colleague Admiral Hux an hour ago.” Kylo’s breath hitches, but the man does not notice or offer any remark on Hux’s wellness. Instead he bids them slide into the glossy Touring, and they oblige as Kylo opens the door. 

“His Majesty’s consulate has arranged for your accomodations in Valletta tonight. They’ve asked me to give you this, sir,” he turns his head from their steady drive on the road a moment to pick up a manilla folder in the passenger seat, offering it to them in the back without so much as a glance. Instinctively, Kylo’s hands flinch, but he composes himself and takes the folder at its corner, and the soldier’s hands return to the steering wheel. “Lovely day isn’t it?” the man says conversationally, nodding to the warm breeze caressing the air around them. Kylo swallows, ignoring him as he opens the folder on his lap. 

Rey couldn’t mind his papers though, agreeing amicably with the driver. Her eyes trace the drifting scenery as they cut closer to a harbor, fisherman’s boats returning from the day’s work with nets full. Their worn wooden hulls and faded sails match the dusty colored gulls and their white wings that fly above, encroaching on the catch of the day with high hopes. 

“Are you alright?” Kylo’s words bring her back to the space they share in the backseat, his body leaning towards hers, though with decidedly careful composure. 

“Yeah,” she glances down, unsettled by his dark, intent eyes. “You…” Rey wets her lip, unsure what it is she wants to put to words, “Kylo, has something happened?” 

He leans back, his eyes scrutinizing, cautious. Leaning upright, he parts his lips, speaking to her without looking as he steels his eyes forward, “Why do you call me that? Why, when you already know…” his voice but drops to a deep murmur, and a chill reverberates through her chest. 

_ Ben. _

In his mind's eye, there’s a stir of cold winds and the press of their bodies together. He was remembering the plane, the altitude and the stir of ocean currents beneath their eyes. 

He hadn’t been ready, and now she watches him, unsure what to say. Intercepting the urge to speak within her, Kylo - Ben, lets a thought, a request, echo through their connection, clearer than the rest. _ Rey, wait. Please. _She could see him trying to stay calm, to not panic. 

So she simply complies, at a loss for his shifting moods. It confounds her. Only an hour before she’d been lost in something bright and sweet, a fragment of a dream. Admittedly it was perhaps in his arms that sleep came so well to her. Only that it was last night her dreams were decidedly less light.

Rey swallows at the memory of his back, the expanse of muscles beneath her fingers, if only in a dream. Did they really feel that way? She catches herself, remembering her promise to him. They were only dreams, even if she had never dreamt anything like that. She couldn’t explore this, this strange way her powers were shifting and growing around him. It would be a betrayal to him, she saw it the first time he awoke this morning under the traces of her phantom touch. No - she was to respect him, whatever new things this bond was opening for her. 

Even if that wasn’t the only reason why she wanted to try.

He was beautiful, but he also looked at her sometimes so fiercely, so full of will and readiness. And then, more often he was gentle, kind even. When he wanted to be… 

“Rey?” 

Had she not realised they stopped? He had already closed his door, crossed to her side then as he leaned over her open door. His eyes appraise her curiously, surveying her thoughts. A deep flush tints her cheeks, and she steps from the car abruptly. 

He blinks heavily, momentarily dazed by her eyes on him. The manila envelope in his hand creases under the effort of his grip, but he uses the other hand to close the door when she steps away. Before she can make the distance between them greater, he reaches out, grabbing her arm to keep her close. His fingers stay gentle, but root her there nonetheless. 

“We are only here one night. You’re to do exactly as I say,” he whispers to her ear. Their arrival fell on one of the colony’s busiest festas. Although she was comfortable enough in crowded places, he decidedly was not. 

He lets go of her arm, their attentions both turning to the hotel facade as the streetlights turn on, casting their golden glow over the stone-gilded window frames and balconies. The building’s height, at four or five storeys, had its shadows overthrown by the lamplight, and now stood brightly against a twilight sky. 

There is someone to accept them, to chat amicably about their travels as they’re led up marble staircases and richly carpeted hallways, but it’s the smells Rey is lost in, faint perfumes and fragrant woods like cedar or pine. She’s lost, that is, until Kylo clears his throat, and they stand before a door, the valet ready to place the keys in one of their hands. 

Readily, she takes the gilded keys, noting only one set. Kylo nods his thanks to the valet as she opens the door, eager to see if its interior resembles the rich hues and patterns of the rest of the hotel. 

And they do, or they even exceed it. Rey had made her rest in a few hovels throughout her life, cells even, but room by room she’s overwhelmed. Her feet carry her quickly to the bedroom, where ornate white and gold bedframes and thick clean duvets make her gasp, regretful that she had slept for so long on the flight. Heavily, Kylo follows her steps, seemingly immune to her glee as she appraises the twin beds. Crossing his arms, he leans against the doorway, gaze following her path as she settles into a pillow large enough to consume her head. 

“You… you asked me if something was wrong,” he says thickly, his full lips set to a firm line when she hears him, coming up to lean her weight on her elbows. 

“I asked because I know,” Rey asserts, watching as he walk to the windows, leaning across the frame there that looks over the city. “Is Ben not your name?” 

His grip tightens where it lays on the window frame, but he diverts his strength before he can break it. Instead he moves to open the glass panes, opening their room to the stir of evening activities and a salty breeze that soothes. 

“It was once.” He murmurs, thinking to the folder’s contents he’d left at the entryway desk: a written copy of Hux’s hospitalization and condition, and a letter from his mother from a few months ago, among other things. He wouldn’t open the letter now.

“My mother used to write to me every day,” he thinks to his uncle’s estate. Even during his stay in Luke’s laboratories, where no one, not even his mother, could conceive the things they tested on him, she had written still. 

“But the name she gave me is lost, a slave’s name. There’s no freedom for me in that name.” He can’t look to her as he says it, feeling some lie in his own words. Even if it angered him to feel that pain again, he couldn't help but feel that name had always belonged to her, that he almost _wanted_ it to. How could he consolidate that with all the pain it held for him? Soon, though, her thoughts compel him after a beat of silence to meet her gaze. 

Her eyes are warm but sharp, seeing through him. “You are more free than you think, you would be, at least -” she stops herself, instead stepping from the bed to lean by the window beside him. But her words go unsaid, their meaning deciphered by the thread between them. _ You are more free than you let yourself be. _

“It’s not just my name,” he rectifies, though even as he says it, something stretches inside him, a small bit of pleasure at hearing her lips caress his name. It reminds him why he can’t allow it.

“I _hurt_ you, Rey. And that’s not the least I could do,” he says, the words clenched as the image of her wincing under his touch pierces through him… 

With his memory to aid her, Rey’s lips press into a solemn line as she remembers the faint pain she felt on her hip. But she would check, she’d have to check if it had been real. 

Catching her thoughts, Ben’s lips part to object, but a single look from her silences him. Her fingers drift to the belt over her jacket, and then the buttons, undoing them with movements prolonged by their gravity. Each move impresses on him, his thoughts, his memory, stirring heat beneath his skin. And yet beneath the layers she’s shedding there would invariably be the evidence of him. His jaw clenches uncomfortably, but she can see it now, beneath the fear pounding in his heart he cares more deeply than he would let himself believe. 

The leather and metal fall to the ground and the cloth slips from her shoulders, thick and stiff, and soon the white cotton follows. She watches him now as she lifts the hem of her base layer up and over her head, following the other garments on the floor at their feet. The freckled expanse of her chest rose shakily under her unsteady breaths, her breasts bound by the cloth bandeau she’d had for years. At a loss for words or willpower, he watches her movements carefully, pushing the fabric of her trousers down past her waist, just enough to reveal her motive as she moves to uncover her hip bone. 

He’s being torn apart by the will to look away. If he saw the bruising on her hip, he couldn’t forgive himself. And yet he had to see it, to reaffirm himself, to fortify the walls he’d held for so long. These defenses roll in his head, as if seeing her this way, this raw and luminous, doesn’t paralyze him entirely. 

So she looks down, and his eyes follow, anticipating splotches of red and purple. Yet it’s only the creamy skin of her hip, hidden from the sun for years, that meets his heady gaze. 

Over her hip, her fingers tremble. They both stare at the skin there, perplexed. He couldn’t bring himself to doubt it had happened, he knew that he had lost control. And had his hand not been just there when he felt her pain? Rey focuses on it as well, as if trying to pull memories from a dream. With the cross beams of their focus centered there, he swears he can actually feel the silken skin beneath his fingertips. But no, even as he feels as though sparks igniting in palms he sees that he hasn’t moved his right hand from his pocket. Testing his own senses, he pulls his fingers back half an inch. 

Softly, she gasps, and he jerks back, as if the air itself had scalded him. Incredulous, he pulls his hand from his pocket, awe lighting his features as he looks between his fingers and her. In her face as well, there’s something in wait, and she exhales shakily, unmoving. 

“_Ben_ -” she sighs, bringing her hands beside her, poised to reach for him? To do something. 

He watches as she settles one at her flushed neck, moving to check the blushing skin there. There’s a realization in her eyes, glowing with understanding he didn’t have yet. Yet her heaving breath brings his attention downwards, to her chest. Beneath the press of her arm, he sees the contours of her pert breasts and decolletage, her peaks hardening beneath the faded cloth of her bandeau. 

Realization smites him and Ben jolts backwards, nearly leaping out of his boots as a pit falls in his stomach, meeting her wide expression. “W-Wait,” he falters, unsure what he’s asking her to wait for. His back thuds heavily against a framed mirror on the wall, knocking the gilded mirror from its place.

Swears escape under his breath, and his hands flash to keep the mirror from falling as Rey steps away. Feeling hot and stirred, he looks elsewhere, anywhere else, though it's a dizzying feat. Rey shifts, taking a step towards him to help, but it is his eyes that stop her. The glaze of his dark eyes glow to her from his face of pale and marked skin. They are both the eyes of a predator and of cornered prey. 

Stirred by his sudden movement, Ben’s stomach growls, an empty reminder that for twelve hours they’ve only had crackers and some cured meat. Rey feels it more than hears it herself, and he seems to snatch the sensation like a lifeline against the rising tides threatening to wash over him. “Food… we need food…” he stammers, face burning. 

With more force than necessary, he storms to the entry hall and yanks the service phone receiver from its place, the pad of his finger spinning numbers for reception. She watches as he gruffs into the receiver with questions that come off more as commands as he enquires into their dining options. 

Though she watches she hardly hears, the tide of the moment passes, and she stands unsure whether she should put her clothes back on. She turns away from him, her mind remembering the wardrobes by the other wall. 

Swinging their doors open, Rey appraises the inside of the wardrobe, empty for all the things they didn’t bring. There are two exceptions, though, two bathrobes that hang from ebony hangers. Smiling to herself, she runs the fabric through her fingertips, soft, white, and inviting. 

She takes the robe to her bed, seating herself there, and stoops to work on the calf-high boots trapping the thick cloth of her trousers. Finally loosening the first boot from her calf, she grunts appreciatively, eliciting a chancing glance from Ben from across the suite. The other soon follows, and she tosses them aside, standing up once more to wrap the robe around her. In his mind’s eye, his eyes flash away, having paused too long to stop and question what was happening. 

“No, we’ll have it in the room, thank you.” More composed, he hangs up the receiver, raking the free hand through his hair haphazardly. He finally looks to Rey, noting her state of dress, her curves hidden graciously by the folds of cream and white. In her eyes, his expression had lost its bewilderment, and for that he was thankful. Quickly, though, he schools his features, parting his lips to break the silence. 

“They’ll bring something up from the kitchens, soon.” She replies with a small smile, to which he responds by crossing over to his own bed, sitting to remove his own shoes as well. 

“That was… interesting,” she says, smiling a little nervously as his eyes narrow. He clears his throat, fighting the threat of a blush. Kylo Ren had enough experience with women and their advances, from a distance, of course. He had little trouble ignoring the painted women men took on their arms at port. Years of physical distance from others and discipline had simply atrophied his desire. But no, he scoffs, not one of them had inflamed him the way she had, had tempted him to act and think so selfishly. He was beginning to tell he was woefully inexperienced with the reactions within him. 

He shakes his head, clearing the thoughts before she can look on them sympathetically. “We don’t know _what_ that was,” he says shakily, trying to recollect his objectivity with measured breaths through the nose. Finally he folds his hands together, more composed, at least, ready to talk about it. “Have you- has that ever happened before?” Have you ever been touched like this? His mind supplies unhelpfully. 

“I don’t _think_ so.” 

He looks to his hand, the fingers still tingling as he stretches it, feeling her gaze linger there. A knock sounds on the door and they both flinch involuntarily, but then he straightens himself and walks through the suite to welcome them. 

“_Grazzi_,” he gruffs, opening the door for the hotel staff in tuxes. Between his black slacks and white work shirt, rolled up to the sleeves, and the hint of Rey’s robe as she peeks furtively from her bed, they’re both significantly less presentable. Neither can pay heed though, as the smell of fresh bread, stew, and antipasti stirs the air around him, reaching her senses. She stands to approach the food cart, coming to stand by his shoulder as they place the dishes in an impressive array on the table. As the smells flood her senses, excitement surges through her as well, and in it she’s tempted to grab his arm in both her hands and thank his defensive tendencies for at least having a mind for food. 

Catching her sentiment, the corners of his lip quirk slightly, but he keeps his focus on the food, overlooking the spread. Baked swordfish, swimming in an aromatic mix of oil, tomatoes, olives and feta. There are more of the olives too, placed in delicate bowls that her focus gravitates towards particularly. It is a table for four, easily, circular, wooden, and laid with lilies and short candles that the two men light in synchronization after the other dishes are set.

Ben knows that next they’d move to pull their chairs out for them, but with a low word he says that would be all. His eyes catch the gleaming water pitcher, however, and as a second thought he asks if they brought a wine selection. Of the three bottles, he picks the Spanish red. He’s glad enough to see their hands are already gloved, so he takes the bottle gratefully, placing a good tip in their hands. 

“_Grazzi hafna_, thank you” they both say, bowing slightly before they take their leave with the cart. 

Rey smiles over her shoulder to him as they close the door, already seated, but he comes to push her chair in anyway. Though her chestnut hair just touches the top of the chair’s back, he elects to grab the sides instead. Before he takes his seat at her left, he crosses to the windows, opening them as he had the bedroom ones. 

“This looks wonderful,” she whispers, perhaps more to herself than to him. He offers her the wine bottle to open, since her eyes scan the spread so eagerly, unsure what to do or take first. Rey smiles when she takes it from him, working to undo the cork as he carefully serves her the stew of stuffed aubergines and swordfish.

“Here,” he says, tearing a piece from the flatbread he left in its bowl, only to dip the crust in the hot mix of feta and olive oil in the swordfish pan.“This is ftira.” 

Rey finishes pouring the wine for them, before she sees that he intends for her to follow his lead. She sets the bottle down to tear a piece for herself, following his suit with the mix as well. 

It feels too strange to watch her eat when he had food as well, not as he had yesterday with her breakfast, so he looks away, savoring the bread and wine before he takes to his plate. 

Rey sighs, delighted by the taste as well, moving her hands to tear another piece. “What I like,” she says, her eyes, again, filled with an excited gleam, “is this.” She dips the bread in her wine glass, and he all but scoffs, but her childish glee still threatens to pull a smile from him. 

“To each her own, I suppose,” he murmurs, hiding the blooming smile with his wineglass as he takes a long sip. They eat in companionable silence after that, Rey’s occasional delight in the dish unhidden by her small reactions. At times they liken the time he walked in on her attempt at seduction, though it’s only authentic enjoyment, and he banishes the image immediately. The connection between them hums, but doesn’t stir; he needn’t embarrass himself or her with wayward thoughts. 

But predominantly, as their meal slows to an end, it is Hux that consumes his thoughts. The notes said he would be fine, but Ben decidedly wasn’t. Couldn’t be, after what he’d done to a friend. Would Hux accept him after this? He could hardly imagine them as they were in the mess yesterday, chatting over swim calls and test designs. 

  
  


“The tests?” Rey asks, chewing on a final bite, entirely nonchalant. Rey had not followed the threads of his thoughts that led there, but her curiosity piqued. She had started looking forward to their tests, however mundane they were. The measured cadence of his voice and the studious focus of his eyes were captivating. 

“I’m not sure we’ll be doing that anymore,” he murmurs, folding his chin in his hand as he leans back, interrupting her revery. 

“And why not?” 

He looks at her more closely, her composure cool but edging on a challenge. “What would be the use, now?” he asks, more curious about her disposition than unwilling to continue studying with her. It’s a job, but it’s more than that as well. For a long time, it defined his search - the search for the cure to his touch. 

Rey hesitates, biting her lip, something softening in her shoulders as she answers, “No one’s ever helped me before, not the way you have,” she says in a low voice. “I don’t want to stop.”

He contemplates her suggestion, but also the hidden rawness beneath it. The last days had stretched her own explanations of her powers, as well as his. He knew that somehow she had become pivotal to his world, even as he had to keep her at an arm's distance, but he had neglected the thought that she, in the same way, could care for him and the promises he gave. 

And he would keep his promises. 

“Yes,” he agrees, his voice rough, disbelieving the way she looks at him, the gentleness that embraces him in her wide eyes. Yet her thoughts...

Her thoughts were vague, but her next questions would probably be enough to tell him where they were heading. But how would he answer them? With responsible boundaries? Or would he drive her away with his full willingness? 

They sat in silence while she replenished their wine glasses. The votive light flickers shadows across her hand, the darkness that had passed over near encompassing. 

She lifts her hand away from the candles, setting down the bottle as he brings his glass to his lips. Rey looks thoughtfully into the flames as she lifts her own glass, “But different,” she says lightly, musing, “We could do some things differently.” 

“Of course,” he bites back a small smile, knowing she doesn’t mean to insult his work or his methods. Instead, he nods, seeing the direction of her decision gaining clarity and momentum. “What specifically would you change?” 

She looks down, all humor and gleam gone from her wide eyes. “Together. Every part of me I open, you have to follow.” 

He appraises her, her courage and quiet bravery. She misses nothing, in all their hours, his giving and retreating. He used to be always sure of his course, but he’s losing it. “You’ve thought about this?” 

“I’ve started to.”

Rey’s mind flashes over the threads of their bond, instances that held potential to break the chains he’d always been, the scrape of her nails on his back as he slept, the smallest touch to her hip. He swallows thickly as he follows, willing himself to speak. 

“Any theories to try in particular?” His voice intonates some dubiousness, though he holds himself with baited breath where her ideas would lead them. 

“One,” she bits her lips guardedly, focusing on his face as she lets the thought drift nebulously beyond his grasp. “I’m still thinking it through, though.” 

“Hmm,” he hums, standing to gather their plates in a stack that goes easily onto the tray they’ve asked him to leave outside. Orderly, designated, stowed away to be cleaned and presentable, like the life he had been making for himself. 

Yet he wouldn’t go back to that. Not if the tumult and chaos meant he could be with…

“Rey, I was wrong about you when we met,” he says, half a mind to stop there. But he went on, setting the record straight on another point. “But for me it’s different. If there is anything we try to change me, it will invariably hurt you.” I would hurt you. 

“And I already told you, I’ll still be here,” Rey says as casually as she is able, though her eyes narrow with sincerity. “Your name, Ben. If you take it, it will help you.”

She stands and walks towards the bedroom with slow intent. He pulls himself away from the table, extinguishing the candles to leave only faint trails of their smoke. His thoughts echo back to his name as she leaves, even as his feet carry him forward to follow.  
  


Every effort he made to solve himself, his skin, was made under the mask of Kylo Ren. As Ben though, he had lost everything. Perhaps, though, that’s who he needed to be to find himself again.

Rey drifts through the dark of their room, giving him space for his thoughts. On the carpet she hears his soft footfalls echo hers, and she fiddles with the cotton belt of her robe, redoing it as she moves to close the windows. The full moon’s chill permeates the room, and she blames it for the shiver that courses through her, and not Ben’s warmth as his body draws closer. He watches her shadowed body move in the moonlight, stilling as he comes to stand as close as he dares, his hand reaching to draw the stiff curtains she cannot move. 

He wouldn’t be reckless, but by God he would be honest. 

“Then,” he rumbles quietly, as he listens to her breathing accelerate, “you can call me by that name.” 

Hopelessly, he waits, and she turns him, smiling and accepting. It makes his breath catch as he nods, drawing the other curtain closed and rendering the room utter black. 

He had not the darkness through, nor the proximity of their bodies now. “Stay there,” he tells her, not wanting to brush her accidentally. Silently, he moves away. 

Before Ben even speaks, Rey heeds his warning, curling her toes on the plush carpet as she strains to hear him search the blackened room for the light. Without too much fumbling, he finds the one at her bedside, freeing her to move again in its light. 

While she surveys the glass bowls and bottles of products in the toilette, he elects to take some for himself and brush his teeth at the foot of his bed, leaving her to test the different lotions and fragrances. 

“Vair’s-” he opens his mouth to speak to her, but the toothpaste obstructs his speech, and he pauses. “Vath's a baff you can draw,” the words come muffled, eliciting a small giggle from Rey. But she understands him yet, helping herself to the small vials of oils and bath salts as he runs the hot water for her. 

The bathroom is spacious enough to accommodate them both, if not his entire workspace as well. Ben rinses his mouth before moving to test the water, now warm enough to start filling the bath. 

He would take one himself, for his hair needs washing badly. The day’s trip had left it untamed by helmet hair and the winds. Tonight though, he wouldn’t let it worry him, yet his hands still brush through the locks twice in vain. “I’ll leave you be,” he tells her, the smile she gives him a silent goodnight. 

As he lays in bed, leaving her lamplight on, he stares at the ceiling, sleep not overtaking him yet. It is not for worry, no. There are the day’s and week’s anxieties in wait, starting with the man who tried to hurt Rey, as well as Hux. The next two days would give them ample time to address those. What keeps him up is different, almost hopeful. His base instinct would be to reject it, but perhaps he should accept it instead.

She was ready to help him with that, and that would make the chaos worth it. 

His mind flits through the test designs he originally had in mind, before they fled Odysseus. Ben had been determined to test her skills in communication and persuasion, two skill sets she had no problems practicing with him. He grins a little to himself at that thought, knowing full well she’d never persuaded him to do something against his will. It was still funny though, what he’d had in mind to test that - moderate vocal exercises and task-lists. She’d want something truly engaging, he decides, thinking to tomorrow. 

He shuffles under the covers, the fabric of his shirt ill-suited for sleep. The hotel robe that matched Rey’s laid strung over the wardrobe door, where he left it. It had been obvious from first glance that it wouldn’t fit his shoulders. 

With a quick glance to the bathroom, Ben undoes his buttons with swift movements, discarding it with a flick of his wrist towards the wardrobe. He pulls the covers back up over his chest, no small part of him wondering why he’s so cautious. It is not that he had ever been ashamed of how he looked, but he’d not exactly had reasons to show it off. He scoffs at himself anyway, settling in as Rey opens the door.

Behind her light and steam spill in through the door as she stands in her robe, wringing her wet hair with a towel. The delicate skin of her calves, collar, and forearms gleam with the dewey mix of water and perfume, a faint fragrance of jasmine and sandalwood that rolls off the air around her, threatening to dull his senses. The ceiling suddenly seems more interesting. 

Shifting her weight, Rey releases her hair to turn off the light. If she senses he’s awake, she doesn’t acknowledge it, savoring the comfort of the duvet as she lets it envelop her. An hour in the bath had been unlike any luxury she’d had in her entire life, and its heat still permeated her, the relief of the water and oil on her stomach and legs both heavenly. 

Turning, she breathes a final sigh of contentment. “Goodnight, Ben.”

At her words, he swallows, still watching the ceiling, but he answers her nonetheless, “Goodnight, Rey.” He expects his words to seal the night, but it only grows, thickens as he lies restless. 

Neither of them was going to fall asleep anytime soon. 

He pulls a hand from the covers to place under his head, going through his usual routines for falling asleep in his head. Imagining beautiful things. 

Ben sighs defeatedly, already knowing it’s futile. Instead he watches the darkness as it begins to take shape, his eyes adjusting and discerning shapes from the shadows. His other hand rests on his stomach, his thumb drawing absentminded circles and lines there. C_ould she be asleep yet? She had slept for so long on the plane… _

He blinks up at the ceiling before reaching out with his mind, the brush with hers faint but alive. The current between them swells and fades, like the rhythm of a tide. When he looks to her bed he realizes it’s for the matching pace of their breathing. 

At the moment he looks, Rey shifts as well, smiling a bit at his lack of subtlety. In the dark she can just see his face now, the jet-black halo of his hair framing his contemplative lips and eyes. Gaining courage, he lets his face fall slowly to the side that faces her, and their eyes look to the other’s. 

And she is beautiful this way. Her wet hair draped like ivy across her pillow as she lays reclined, her lashes full and eyes alight with awakeness. But her awakeness is not restless, as he is, it’s bracing and elated.

“Maybe,” she utters softly, unbreaking their locked gaze, “it is my turn to soothe your dreams...” 

“Maybe,” Ben admits, tiredness cloaking his voice. But then he realizes he hadn’t really spoken, neither of them had. The threads of their connection had merely strengthened, roped their thoughts to one. 

In the dark, Ben gives her the smallest of nods, and Rey adjusts, her focus on him renewed in its intensity. 

He tries not to move, wondering if she was going to try to replicate what had happened earlier, and his throat constricts for two desires to stop her and beg her to do it. Her eyes do linger on his exposed collar, the arm laid behind his head, the line where the sheet just covers his chest and torso. 

Instead, something opens inside her, and Ben exhales with a mix of relief and loss. She’s showing him something else, more than a memory, but less than a story. It’s a string of sensations and emotions, moments she’d grasped from a lifetime of squalor that still made living beautiful. Sand on her hands as she beheld a beached shell in her palm. Broken pieces of pottery she etches into with pointy stones. A man robbed of one leg during the Boer Wars she befriended on her begging quarter, who had once beat off a group of vile schoolboys with his wooden leg. She had been fine to whoop them herself, but the man insisted. They never bothered her again. 

Ben chuckles at that particular image, and her face breaks into a smile when she beholds it. She’d never heard or seen his laugh before, and it was wonderful. The overall effect took years from his features, and he seems even youthful. 

His laugh is deep, lazy with edging sleep, and it fades into a crooked smile as he looks away, breaking their eye contact for the first time in minutes. 

“Ben?” Her voice reaches him again, and it’s real, softly spoken. He looks to her eager eyes, voicing a question with words in their minds alone, “would you say something?” 

_Out loud_, she means. She wants to hear him, Ben recognizes. Rey _likes_ the sound of his voice, and that awareness fills his chest with strange and foreign pride. “I’m happy to oblige. Please,” he chuckles lowly, “advise me on what you would most like to hear.” 

“You,” she smiles, sounding as if she’d continue her sentence. Instead she laughs nervously, shrugging when it is she who turns away, “That reply will do for present,” she glances one final time to him.

With heavier breaths, Ben feels released, and though he is tired a part of him wants to cling to this moment. But he blinks heavily a few times, at peace to let their silence stay that way as he falls off the edge of sleep. Quiet, but not alone. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope I haven't dug too deep a hole with details. Thank you guys for your feedback and comments! Kudos if you caught the Pride and Prejudice reference, and thanks again for reading <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Thank you all for your patience. I've been cementing the direction I've been wanting to go with this fic, and though it's a little different than it started, I hope it's alright. Always encouraged by your kudos and feedback! Hope you enjoy :) 
> 
> Typos have been minimally addressed, will be back for notes <3

Of all the colours in the market stalls and textile shops, she chooses green. A deep, forest green that hung from her freckled shoulders and lean frame as a sundress. She hadn’t wanted anything else in the way of clothes, just the dress. Still, he insists on one in white, a set of nightclothes, and the money he slips her for undergarments. He doesn’t need to imagine the shapes, cloths, and colours that hug her skin beneath the billowy dresses. Where his thoughts are concerned, he's had enough trouble with wandering already. The only other thing she’s drawn to outright is a pair of light brown oxfords, their heels unlike any shoe she’s had before, but short enough to function well. 

She clicks them together while she waits in the hospital lobby, as nurses in white bustle through the ammonia-scented hallways. She’s the only spot of color that isn’t pale blue or blood red. Ben can just see her through the blinds of Hux’s room.

“Ren? I’m surprised you came…” Hux manages to quip, but he can’t contain a grimace when he sits up, tugging at the IV tubes in his arm. 

“Hux,” Ben manages to speak through the knot building in his throat. Painfully, he swallows it as best he can. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” 

“Then don’t. It’s all done now. And it wasn’t your fault.” He levels Ben with a glare that silences him. “It’s done,” he repeats quietly, leaning back into the pillows with a tired exhale and shut eyes. 

Beside him, Ben remains seated, clasping his hands and sharing his silence. Just outside of the room, there’s the occasional crew of doctors and nurses, wheely beds, and firmly given orders, but there is nothing to disturb them. Ben’s eyes rove over the IV bag, evaluating the solutions inside and their uses. It was not nearly as murky as his usual victims had it, and he frowns, half a mind to correct the solutions himself building under his skin. 

“They did alright, Ren,” Hux interjects, spotting the reason for Ben’s unspoken concern, the reddening of his skin. “It seems it won’t be that easy to get rid of me.”

He shakes his head, dropping his gaze from Hux’s medications to his hands, their callouses and bareness. “I don’t understand. How can you even move?” 

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the answer to that. Maybe whatever you’re made of is getting softer.” Ben shoots him a bemused look, and Hux’s humor abates, allowing himself to appear reflective.

“I merely mean to say that I’m… I’m alright. Even when it happened, I felt more shock than pain. It was as if…” he loses himself for a moment, deciding with cautious satisfaction on an accurate metaphor. “It was as if I’d received a blow from a sheathed sword. I could tell it was powerful, but there was something else protecting me from the full impact or sharpness when it landed.” 

From where he sits, Ben only watches on with a furrowed brow, his mind testing the words, the impossibility of the man before him. It mounts, clashing inside him, and he finally moves. Snatching the bedside clipboard, he goes without giving Hux a response and reads over the notes, English and Maltese handwriting interchanged on the pages. There are no notes of seizures, paralysis, not even morphine…

“How is this possible?” He exhales shakily, pressing his palms and fingers together as if in prayer to his lips. What if Hux had his own aptitudes, self-healing or - 

“I wouldn’t put this on me, Ren,” Hux catches his train of thought, perhaps sharing it himself. “You and I both know I’m merely the brains of this operation.” 

Ben doesn’t answer him, only just grasping the logic behind Hux’s conclusion. It was beyond unlikely that this was Hux’s doing. Himself, on the other hand, or even, he notes with apprehension at the near-hopeful thought, him and Rey...

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

He looks to Hux once more, his jaw falling open, his expression as a face just slapped. Here was a man he trusts unveiling his one betrayal. Even yet, he can’t keep his eyes from treacherously revealing him as they find her through the blinds that look into the hallway, a newspaper in her lap and her left hand rolling the fabric of that green dress between her fingertips. 

And then, her eyes linger somewhere, a page of comics, perhaps, and when she smiles, he’s not afraid anymore. Not about her. 

“Yes,” the muscles in his jaw flex thoughtfully, and he tears his eyes from her waiting figure. “I brought her with me. And I - ” he stops, searching for the words. Only then, though, he sees Hux, his indifferent eyes. The indifference holds something deeper, though, banking on contentment. _He knows_, Ben realizes, he's known for perhaps a while now. 

“You’re not concerned about this?” He questions, baffled. Hux adjusts his shoulders, in what Ben couldn’t be sure of as a shrug or a move for the sake of his comfort. Regardless, he winces from the sudden movement, filling the next moments with silence as he breathes through his pain with gritted teeth. 

A final, longer sigh escapes him, and he sounds relieved. “You deserve to be happy.” 

Ben scoffs, standing from his seat. He couldn’t sit still any longer, couldn’t hear assurances from the man he hospitalized. Bracing himself on the window sill, he leans towards the walled city views, losing himself in it as something dangerous pulses through him. “You’re wrong,” he rumbles, hardly taming the rising snarl that affirms his worthlessness within him. There's also a clarity there in the simmering rage, one he gains as he unveils Hux’s assumption, that they would be happy together - her, beside him.

“I don’t rejoice in taking someone else’s happiness from them, just for my own.”

“She’s still here, is she not? And you care for her.” The man hints, irreverent of Ben's blooming anger. Though he can’t possibly see her from where he lays on the hospital bed, a second glance from Ben affirms he's right. With nothing to be said that can deflect the admiral's comment, he stews there, until Hux decides he’s ready for a change in subject. “Was anyone else waiting in the lobby?” he murmurs, some wariness tinting his voice.

“Do you mean from the Hermes?” 

Hux’s lips tighten, and wearily, he lifts his arm to retrieve something. Ben steps closer, eyes reading the man’s intent as his hands find the grey folder on his bedside table. “They sent a courier out with this last night. It’s only a matter of time before they’ll want to see me,” he holds the letter out to Ben, who takes it with hands that move too cautiously for the years they've been friends. One moment, one lapse, had changed that. 

Ben’s eyes widen on the pages beneath the folder’s cover, the urgency scattered across its wording. “What happened?”

“What happened is your pilot used you and the girl to escape her position at the Hermes. Their intelligence had intended to question her over her unauthorized use of a telegraph in recent weeks, and maybe even longer.”  
  


“She didn’t return last night?” He wonders aloud, remembering the woman’s biplane as it faded into the distance. North instead of south. He reads on through her AWOL report until the larger pieces fall into play across the page, a letter. 

_ Paige Tico’s suspected involvement in the dangerous political dissident group known as the Resistance is no less than confirmed by her leave of unauthorized absence. Further infiltration by the Resistance of any First Order naval forces must be investigated immediately, for which the compliance of the US Odysseus is pertinent. If immediate action is not taken to unveil and interrogate Paige Tico’s correspondents, British and American forces may fail to contain any chaos and mutiny at hand. With the authorization of Commander Chief of Naval Staff Cornelius Snoke, you are to submit all Odysseus Project records, intel, and subjects to Admiral Pryde and the Bureau of Internal Investigations. Those necessary for direct questioning include Rose Tico, Finn Storm, Dr. Kylo Ren, and any additional subjects currently under the Odysseus Project. _

“Horseshit,” a curse tumbles out from under his breath as his brows furrow. The folder falls from his hands on the bed, the papers spilling unevenly across the topsheet covering Hux’s legs. “You knew this.” 

“No," Hux winces, but something tells Ben he had withheld a flinch. "Not to this extent, no. I knew about the group and their smuggling of political dissidents. Admittedly, their patterns have corresponded with our sea lanes recently, with persons of interest disappearing from one country we visit to the next. But that any of your program participants would be on their suspect list -”

“Including myself?” 

“Including you. Ren, you need to listen. They’ll understand there’s been a mista-” 

He shakes his head with near violence, and his teeth grit as he levels his voice at Hux. It is a fool's question, but the demand rises within him to know its answer, to know whether he'd played into a ruse so blindly. “Does Dameron know?” Hux halts, his lips tightening into a thin, solemn line. “Does he _know_ about this?” 

The admiral’s eyes cast downwards, and he decidedly sets his eyes closed in honest answer, his reply only just escaping him. “Poe is Resistance, Ren. I believe he always has been.”

Ben watches him, searching for any trace of a lie and finding none. Hux sighs heavily, the weight of their mistakes mounting on his shoulders. “And I made him acting commander.” 

“If this is true,” Ben whispers, “it’s too late for the Order to get Odysseus.” He presses his thumb to his palm and massages the pulse there, trying to tame its racing beat. He didn’t want the project exposed to Hermes or anyone else beyond his chain of command, but to have it in the hands of smugglers was a sure way to have its existence erased. 

“Tell me Ren,” Hux, curious, interrupts his thoughts. With a flick of his chin, he indicates to the hallway, the woman still waiting there, “do you think she’s with them?” 

Instinctively, his lips move to say no, to assure him it wasn’t probable, but just as suddenly he realizes it doesn’t matter, so long as her life is not in danger. As long as she's beside him.

“I don’t think so." He murmurs, wetting his lip. "We can see each other. We’re… bonded somehow.” He swallows, but there’s a relief in saying it aloud that washes over him. So he leans into it, letting its stream cleanse him. Only the truth, with the man he trusts most.

“Our minds, after I looked at her - after we looked at each other, were bridged beyond whatever’s been said of her powers so far. It’s beyond anything.” He sighs, thoughtful as he reaches out with his mind, the colours of her just there, solid and clear. 

Hux watches on, his face twitching as he nears a question, or a readiness to express the incredulity lingering in his eyes. Still, quietly, he looks to Ben. 

“Could you ask her to come in?” He asks, something akin to awe or gentility filling his request. A part of Ben surges, protective and anxious, Instead of giving way to it, a better part of him, understands his friend. So he nods, crossing the room to open the door. 

Though they’re not close, she looks up when the door clicks behind him, seeing him from where she sits. She stands, but waits as he moves through the hallway, giving ample space between himself and the various doctors he passes. 

As he nears, his eyes catch the mistake in her ensemble, namely what it doesn’t cover, the delicate curve of her collarbone and the lithe way she holds her sun-kissed shoulders. Everything in the fabric, its softness, its blue-green colour, its depth and richness, accentuates her beauty. There is warmth in the untidy buns of her chestnut hair and her glowing skin, rich fields of gold and green in her eyes, and a gravity there he cannot withdraw from. He can’t believe there was once a time he thought her plain, or that he would turn away from seeing her. 

And though she is beautiful, it’s her mind that anchors him, that keeps him from all thought of looking away. Beyond the door he’s left behind him, Hux will be waiting to speak with her, to join him in his treachery. As she sees Ben’s thoughts, she nods in assent. Then it is another moment till his steps bring him to her. 

“You stayed,” Ben can't tell if he says those words so much as he imagines them. It will always astound him, her presence where it shouldn't be. Where, by no reasoning, he can account for its continued light in his life. Still, his mind will grasp at straws in the dark, anything that will explain but Hux’s unsaid words. _You make her happy as well. _

“I wanted to,” she replies simply, her lip coming under the edge of her teeth as she offers him a small, crooked smile. If she’s read the thought he held just a moment ago, she doesn’t acknowledge it beyond that. Instead, she then looks to the room where Hux awaits their return together. “You trust him,” she states, not accusingly or with question, only truth. 

Her breath brushes his face, and for the first time since last night, Ben notices the shift in the space between their bodies, barely accommodating the current where they can’t touch. “I do,” he answers softly, donning his hands with gloves before he offers one to her. 

Rey takes it; the warmth she sees, human and gentle, that flows through Ben at the thought of his closest friend reassures her. There’s a raging uncertainty that’s been tempered, and for a moment she smiles, recognizing the thought for a hope that she and his friend will get along well. She squeezes his hand in encouragement, matching the rhythm of his breath and the length of his strides with an ease, heightened by the weight and security of her hand in his. It’s new and hopeful, feeling the warmth through his glove. When he opens the door once more, she’s sad to see it end. 

Hux is upright when they come in. Warily, Ben watches them both as Hux looks over her, not lecherously, only not meeting her eyes yet. “Miss Kenobi,” when he speaks, Ben's eyes move with them, but surprise takes him when Hux meets her eyes after all, resolve settled in his features as his mind opens to her. “I’m afraid we haven’t been formally acquainted yet.”

“Not quite,” she agrees, no small edge of sarcasm in her voice. He gestures to the seat where Ben had just been, and she takes it, obliging him despite her quip at their brief past as friend-to-captor and captive. Ben leans against the wall, his arms crossed at his chest instead of joining them. Still, he can’t help but stare; there are the threads of his friend’s thoughts that weave through their bond, transiting from her to him. She speaks to his thoughts, however, aloud for their sakes. “You wish to learn what I know of the Resistance.” 

The corner of Hux’s lip pulls upwards slightly, and he affirms her statement. In turn, she answers.

“I’m afraid I’ve only heard of it once. I was in Gibraltar,” Hux and Ben shift at the name; their home port. Rey shudders as well, and briefly, Ben can feel some lingering unease in her thoughts at its mention, before she shakes it away.

“It was in the thoughts of many there. Germans, Russians, revolutionaries.” She looks down, lost in a handful of memories he'd collectively name as longing, whether for their politics or their comraderie he couldn't tell.

“I had an interest in finding them. I thought they could get me to Tel Aviv, nearer to my home, my parents." Whether she lingers intentionally or not on her missing family, Ben doesn't detect. She only moves onwards still, the vestige of her lost family forgotten. "But I was discovered and arrested before I could make contact.” 

Hux nods thoughtfully, her show of snippets of memory attesting to her transparency. It's enough for him, though Ben sees the way the nuances in her emotions evade the man's notice, but he believes her nonetheless. In fact, it didn’t seem he had any access to her thoughts at all, beyond what she allowed him. 

“You would have been right in assuming they could take you to Palestine, they’ve infiltrated British and American fleets without our detection, more so than we could scope. That is, until now.” Hux glances back to Ben, his jaw clenching with stress. “But Odysseus is in their control now, and the hunt for it has already begun. Soon the military will want answers. You both will have to give them one.”

Rey frowns, “There’s nothing we can give them,” her eyes narrow on Hux, something beyond Ben's grasp slipping through her access to his companion's mind. “You think they’re going to torture us for this?” Her voice then rises, fear widening in her eyes. 

Ben startles at her words, realizing their accuracy as he sees its echo in Hux’s vision, his supposition for their future under Admiral Pryde's direction. He steps towards Rey and Hux, every muscle pulled taut, a bow ready for lethal release. “We need to leave,” he tells her lowly, voice warning like thunder before a storm. A gloved hand rests on her shoulder, urging her to her feet. But she doesn’t move yet. They both look to Hux, a face of solemn lines and defeat. Ben has to try, for his friend, at least. “Hux, come with us.” 

Without despondence or apparent remorse, the admiral shakes his head. “You have nowhere to go, Ren. Yes, I can't help my thoughts, and I had thought that you could be tortured for your connection. It is not a certainty; I only meant that it _can_ happen,” he stresses. Ben wants to scoff. Pryde, the head of internal investigations, was known for his brutality. He should have seen it sooner. The exceptions were few where he wouldn’t torture an answer from his captives. So he had heard. 

He wouldn’t wait to find out, he couldn’t wait to let it happen to Rey, for her to find out as well. Hux continues, seeing Ben's emotions flicker across his face, “Appeal to Snoke, Ren. You are his favourite, his prodigy.” Rey’s shoulders stiffen under his hand, only slightly, but Ben attributes it to the threat at hand as he considers Hux’s reasoning. “You know I’m right, Ren. He won’t allow it.”

“He authorized the paperwork,” the slip of Ben's teeth as he grinds them nearly draws blood from his cheek, uncertainty coiling in his stomach. There's no solace, no time to think. And yet, his mind persists to the faint faith in that one name. Something near hopeful ebbs through him, a vision where they walk away from this once more, together. 

“Make it clear to him,” Hux counters Ben's single claim to mistrust, grabbing a pen from his bedside to scribble on a scrap of paper, “that there has been a misunderstanding. You will _submit yourself_,” he slows his speech, enunciating to Ben, “to any necessary efforts in this investigation. He will not let it get out of hand.” He extends the piece of paper, an extension number scrawled on its edge. Hux’s personal comm line to Snoke. 

Ben takes it, folding it in his hand. His heart has slowed its violent rhythm. He knows this can work, it should work. He’s not sure what he was thinking of, leaving, running away with Rey. He nods his gratitude. “Hux. Thank you.”

The man shakes his head once, firmly. “Don’t. There’s a phone in the hallway. The base operator number is 642; give her the extension.” Under Ben's hand, Rey finally rises, but another reaches for her wrist, and Hux speaks again. “Actually, Miss Kenobi. I’d like to speak with you for a moment, privately.” 

As quickly as he had reached for her, his wrist releases her, and something like envy twists within Ben as he watches on. For his friend to reach and touch so easily as he had, without pushing her to the brink of death, or even that he could do something so normal she doesn’t think twice of it, simmers in him with its blatant disregard for his lacking. But then he hears Hux's request again with reason, sees her nod of assent, feels himself let her go. 

As his hand comes back to his side, she turns quickly, taking it in hers. She squeezes through the leather in reassurance, what trembling there is in her lip quelled slightly by a weak smile.

She lets go and he leaves, following Hux’s instructions as his hand grips the receiver, turning numbers into the dial.

“Kylo,” a deep voice rasps to him from the other side, “I was not expecting you. But I suppose I couldn’t expect Armitage, either. I’ve heard the Admiral is not in good health.”

“Commander,” a mix of relief stirs through Ben, running parallel in his veins to the mounting anxiety to let himself be heard. Still, he bridles himself with an unsteady breath, forcing himself to speak normally. “The Admiral will need time to recover. But there is more at hand. Odysseus has been sabotaged by the Resistance,” he explains, his breathing bated as Snoke listens silently. “Hux and I are the only ones who made it to port. The others - ” he bites his cheek, he has to slow himself. “We believe there’s been a mutiny, sir.” 

Snoke’s breath stirs on the other side of the line, unaffected, and Ben wonders if he spoke poorly. “Commander?”

“Yes, Doctor Ren. I have heard you,” The man says slowly, “you have not failed to keep me informed. Now, can you confirm that it is only you and Armitage who have escaped this insurgence?” The ‘s’ across his words sounds like a hiss, and Ben’s heart freezes as he turns instinctively, eyes finding Rey through the blinds once more, standing at Hux’s bedside, hardness in her eyes. He swallows, screwing his eyes shut as he recognizes his mistake.

“No,” he exhales heavily, “I misspoke. Rey Kenobi -”

“Ahh, yes. The Niima girl.” There is something in his voice, Ben can swear it’s reminiscent, fond, even. “I have no doubt you can… _appreciate_ the subject’s abilities, Doctor Ren?” 

Ben shifts his weight as he holds the receiver, an odd sensation constricting his chest. He doesn’t know how to manage an answer, there doesn’t feel like there’s any room in his throat to speak. A reply leaves him, nonetheless, so low he wonders, hopelessly, if he had been heard. “Sir…”

“If I am to understand your circumstance correctly, _Doctor_, you’re calling because you’ve seen the security briefing,” Snoke doesn’t halt for Ben’s confirmation, only breezing through his explanation without effort or care, “you’re aware what this means, for you.” He can hear Snoke inhale like a man breathing through a glass straw. “I’m glad you called me.” 

“Commander Snoke, I believe there’s still time to salvage the project. Rey-” he catches himself, grasping for words, for anything beyond the thunderous rush in his head. “The subject, her value outdoes the others. Odysseus can continue at port, with your permission.” 

“Of course, Kylo. Of course. I know what it means to you.” Snoke supplies his permit readily. And indeed, he sounds like a father offering a son his only wishes. “Though obviously,” he adds casually, pulling Ben from his small reverie, “the scavenger will need to be processed.” 

Something snaps. Ben doesn’t know if it’s the phone receiver. He’s falling, language lost on him as he staggers, his weight near falling as he reaches out a clenched fist to brace the wall. 

“Rey Kenobi, Doctor Ren. I trust that shouldn’t be difficult with her still in your custody.” 

Her name escapes Snoke’s lips like a cursed slur. Still, the sounds of her name grounds him. The broken cord within him is reroped, rethreaded. Stronger. 

“No.”

Snoke pauses, whether from shock or misunderstanding, Ben doesn’t know. “No?” Snokes tests, and Ben realizes what he said, what Snoke heard, his patent challenge. 

“No, _s__ir_.” It’s all he can do to hold himself back. _God_, he tries. “Commander,” he pushes against the silence, hardly keeping his voice from becoming a plea, “the subject is-” _everything._ She’s everything. He wants to lose himself and shout as loud as it takes. But his voice is even, at least, as even as he can manage, “_pertinent_ to our recovery as a project.”

Across the line, Snoke hums, contemplative, his silence momentary. 

“I see,” he utters thoughtfully. Several more seconds pass, their agony unbearable as Ben listens. Eventually, Snoke murmurs to himself, a small sign of agreement. “Yes,” he stretches the word, as though savoring it. “Whatever you need, boy. I will be in touch with Admiral Pryde.” 

Ben lets go of his breath, the burning in his lungs receding. “Sir,” he says, at a loss, disbelief mixing with consolation. “Thank you, sir.”

“Yes,” Snoke repeats himself, without any further acknowledgment. “Well, I must let you go, Doctor. See to it that I have a report of your _progress_,” again, the hiss, but then his voice quietens. “I will see you in Gibraltar.” 

The call ends, with no bother for Ben’s reply to keep him there. There’s only a dead line, and a dead weight in Ben’s chest that takes an eternity to lift. 

_They’ll be alright. _Rey _will be alright_. He lets go of the receiver, his motions slow, shocked. 

Without his intent, his steps take them to Hux’s room, where he and Rey wait quietly for him. She reads his consolation, his solace, and she shares it with widened eyes and a small. It’s not until she’s closed the space between them that she recognizes her own actions, how her hands reach for his face. And they drop. A small bit of gratitude reaches out to her from their bond, but next to the relief that they won’t be questioned Ben forgets himself. Brightness takes his features, and he looks to Hux, who shares their joy, though there are beads of sweat on the man’s brow. 

Ben’s laugh falters, but isn’t quite lost as he steps to Hux. “Hux? Should I open a window?” He doesn’t look well, though the man’s shrug of nonchalance is not entirely uncharacteristic, as of late. 

“Don’t,” he lifts his hand to wave them away, though it seems his limbs are heavy, “don’t worry about me.” The drops of sweat grow, and he looks at Ben as if there’s trouble meeting his eye, “You should go; take her with you.” 

Ben watches, wanting to protest, but Hux finally meets his eye with a silencing gaze, “Go. Please.”

  
Rey leaves first. As he follows, Ben holds to the doorframe, halting himself to turn back. Hux lays down, pressing a button that calls for the nurse. It’s not urgent, only routine, he sees through the placard that lights up outside the door. “Admiral. Best of luck.” 

“You too,” Hux laughs a little under his breath, watching them go, “Solo.”

  
  



	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In advance, let me say this has been quite a chapter to write. I originally had quite a different plan in mind for Ben and Rey's stay in Malta, but I'm afraid I had to change that drastically in the interests of seeing Ben's character development. Notes at the end to help explain plot direction/what comes next.

Outside of the hospital, a cool breeze carries the smell of sea salt to replace the memory of ammonia-stained hallways behind them. Stepping before him to disperse the crowds, Rey maneuvers between them, carving a path for him through the masses. He follows her steps, lest he brush against an unsuspecting stranger. It’s out of habit, perhaps. His gloves are on and there’s no real risk to those around him, but as they part from the density of the city center the heat grows, and he finds himself taking them off. 

They’ve not agreed on where their steps will take them, Ben only follows. There’s a harbor where her pace slows before coming to a still. It’s not as the main one had been, with humid airs and crowded lanes. Here, an open horizon looms, the promise of blessed rain distant but sure in a group of blooming clouds. Rey looks at them, her eyes lost. It helps her with the nausea he’s catching in waves off of her thoughts. 

It’s not only nausea, there’s a despair itching at the surface beneath her skin. It clashes within her, within the peace he’s just ensured for them. “Rey,” he steps towards her, concern in his voice, “you’re shaking.” 

She slips away from the hand on her back, her thoughts betraying her in visions that Ben takes and names as they flash in her eyes. How close they’d been to being taken and questioned, how painfully her memories had been resurged of her search for her parents. In the first he shared her fear, the second he had no reason to, but in her grief he reaches out nonetheless, his words falling in the silence between them. 

“You’re not alone.”

It’s only then that she meets his eyes, turning to face him fully. She doesn’t hold the intensity of his gaze for long though, looking down when quiet sobs begin to rack her bare shoulders. “Rey-” his voice deepens now, anxiety blooming in his chest as he closes the space between them. What’s wrong? What could be wrong?

Seeing him, what he’s thinking, she looks up to shake her head. It’s a plea as she folds herself into his arms and chest, quietly asking him not to turn her away. And with her there, he feels smited to the spot where he stands. It all happens so fast. 

Her arms are tight around his shirt, her fingers clinging to the seamed edges of his jacket. Hot tears spill from her, marking his shirt and the skin beneath his collar. A shocked gasp escapes Ben when she collides into him, his hands held in front of him, uncertain and empty. 

She grips tighter, another vision drifting through their bond. 

Her hair…

Her hair had brushed his lips on the plane ride. She hadn’t felt it, but somehow she knew, had seen it in one of his own thoughts that cherished that moment so fiercely. She knew he could touch it, and she wanted it again. Though her own hands stay where he’s covered, and her head where it rests is mindful of the skin at his neck, her thoughts are roaming him, anchored to him. And her hair; she wants him to be anchored to her too. 

Tentatively, he lays his right arm across her back, his hand pulling her closer to him though they hold his gloves. The other hand raises, trembling, as he accepts her request, as he offers himself to her. 

He rests his hand on her hair, her stunning waves and the loose bun that holds it half up soft under his touch. Comfort spills over her as he cradles her head to him, and he shares, glories in it as well. Whether he does this for a moment, or for a hundred moments, he can’t tell. He can’t think or feel anything besides how wonderful this is. 

“Ben,” she sighs into his shirt, her eyes well dried by the material. Although she doesn’t move her head yet, she murmurs into his chest, so low he can hardly make out the words. “I -” unsteadily, she gasps as her breathing evens, her words leaving her without her choice or control, “I can’t stop being afraid.”

He wants to draw a soothing circle in her scalp with his thumb. This is the closest he’s been, the closest he’s felt, to anyone in years beyond his memory. Instead he only chooses to grasp her tighter to his chest, careful not to crush her to him in misplaced awe for her closeness, her power over him. “I feel it too.” 

More words linger on his lips; he wants to preserve this, wants her to feel safe. But beside them, a figure steps into Ben’s periphery, eclipsing the golden sunlight with the broad span of his frame. The stark contrast blinds him momentarily, and Ben cannot see his face, but soon he shields Rey’s body from the shadow with his own. The shaking in her shoulders subsides, her grip on him loosening somewhat, and Ben’s eyes finally adjust to the man at hand.

From his appearance, the man is military - an officer. His uniform isn’t Royal or American, but a dark blue resembling midnight. With his hands folded behind his back, he holds his ground while Ben changes his stance to face him. Around them there’s the harboured wharf, but Ben sees only now how empty it is beyond the weathered old fishermen and stray seabirds. They’re alone with this man. 

“Is there something we can help you with, officer?” Ben offers. He clenches his jaw, eyes trained on the man’s expressions watchfully. His words are amicable enough, but there’s an incivility, a hard edge Ben doesn’t bother smoothing out beneath the surface of his sentences. The man isn’t looking at them with any hostility, but there’s a distaste in his eyes that sets Ben off, and his eyes harden. 

“Yes, Doctor, indeed there is.” A voice answers from behind the figure: a man in the backseat of a convertible leans out from his car, a casual arm resting on the doorframe, hat loose in hand. His smile is open enough, if not a bit strained. The deep lines around his mouth indicate a stern temperament, clashing significantly with the crooked smirk he gives them. Although he’s wearing darkened lenses, the tilt of his chin tells Ben that his eyes are appraising them, and with final, gradual recognition he realizes the name behind the face. 

“Admiral Pryde,” he stiffens, standing the slightest bit taller. Rey adjusts her shoulders as well, moving to widen the space between them. Neither of the men will meet her eyes, but the admiral smiles again and nods in acknowledgement, placing his cap back on his head. 

“I’ve received a call from the Commander. He mentioned your admiral’s disposition, and the kindness you did in visiting him at the hospital. I hope he is in good health soon.” As he speaks, the larger man, his chauffeur, Ben assumes, moves back to the car and opens a door. A glance and a hand gesture are all Ben needs to see that their intentions are for him and Rey to get in. 

The call. He got the call from Snoke. Rey’s hand is still there on his arm, tethering him to some calm beyond himself when he answers. “I hope so as well, Admiral,” he replies coolly, allowing himself to appear thankful for the man’s niceties. 

He glances back to the chauffeur’s hand on the car door, awaiting their movement. Though neither he or Rey move to oblige him, Ben wonders how long he can refuse the gesture. Surely Snoke’s call meant they would be free from Pryde’s investigation.

But no, Ben remembers Hux’s instructions distinctly now. They would still need to comply with the Admiral’s directions, would have to talk to him about various details and particulars, would have to be careful. 

“Thank you,” he breaks the silence, his voice even. He steps towards the car more surely now, his arm slipping from Rey as he slides into the seat. Pryde turns from the passenger side to offer Ben a hand, but it is not in greeting as Ben assumed. A black cloth is bundled in his fingers there. 

“Not a worry, Doctor. We just have a few immediate matters to handle concerning your project.” Seeing it’s for him, Ben takes the cloth from Pryde, only to recognize it as something like he carried himself, recently.

A blindfold.

“You’ll ask Ms. Kenobi to oblige us, if you wouldn’t oppose,” he continues, his voice reassuring. “Only procedure.” 

At the sound of her name, something inside Ben sparks, live as a wire. That this man has the knowledge of it is not necessarily a surprise, only that he insists on her wearing a blindfold. His mind moves like molasses, only slowly making sense of it: that Snoke would know, Snoke had told them, and soon the trouble would be over.

So he tries to disregard the unease that crawls at the nape of his neck, knowing everything should be fine with the Commander on his side. The protectiveness that flares instinctively in his spine comes under his discipline, and he releases the fist he had unconsciously curled around the blindfold in his hand. Remembering himself, he nods his agreement, Rey taking her seat in the car beside him. 

Even though Pryde turns away and the chauffeur closes the doors, Rey doesn’t move her eyes from where she stares straight ahead, and neither does he. In his mind, though, he sees her affirmation, her move to angle herself away from him. The blindfold, he remembers, is for her. 

He ties the cloth around her head, fingers not avoiding the brush of her hair as they once had. She inhales shakily at his gentle touch, sensing the care beneath his movements. When he’s finished, she leans back against the seat, hands moving to adjust the blindfold as they drive off. Pryde, perhaps thinking he’s being subtle, checks over his shoulder to see that it’s secured. 

“Thank you for your understanding, Madam,” he says, settling back into his seat. Rey sits rigid and still beside him, no acknowledgment leaving her lips; he continues anyway. “It will be of great use, Doctor, to have your input on the files we have on the Hermes. That is, when they arrive at port.”

Ben shifts on the seat; Pryde’s words make him wonder just how long this process will last, or their required presence for it. By his estimates, the Hermes was to arrive tomorrow, or sooner. Despite the urge to ask, he isn’t eager to reveal his impatience to leave, for Rey’s sake as much as his own. 

Barring the noise of the city streets, it’s a long, silent journey before the car leaves the outskirts of Valletta and rolls through a series of roads carved in the arid countryside. The last of these roads looks as if it’s to nowhere, but Ben knows they are just at the fringe of the island’s eastern military installation. At first glance, Ben suspects a back entrance to the base, something not uncommon in his years of military work, when being inconspicuous was required of many jobs and subject-transfers. He relays their path in images to Rey as they drive along, which she takes readily, collating them into a bigger picture he’s having trouble himself discerning. 

Then he sees an end to the road, an unimposing building of sandstone and concrete that juts from the rocky terrain around it. From the top of the road, he can see the land span out beneath them, the landscape dropping off into sea cliffs just behind the building’s frame. The sky beyond projects a piercing blue through the holes between thickening rain clouds, but above them the arching sun still blazes down. A gated fence and two soldiers on guard split the road halfway down. As the car descends down the dirt path, passing the gate guards quickly, Ben gets a better glance at the structure itself where they’re heading, and he knows it’s a bunker. 

Ben. His name calls to him from Rey’s mind, compelling him to tear his focus from the nearing bunker. Her arm shoots out for him, urgency in her hand where it grips his forearm with a firm vise. Her breathing is unsteady once more, and though she can’t see the road ahead of them, her thoughts rove over the building at its end. 

Not from his thoughts, but Hux’s, echoed to her from that hospital room. Thoughts, images, rumours…

_ You think they’re going to torture us for this? _

He looks to her blindfolded eyes, and though her questions are an echo from a memory, he answers her directly. We’re safe, Rey. The words don’t reach her directly, but he sends what reassurance he can through them. And like a mantra, his faith in the Commander echoes and builds, telling her Snoke is on their side. 

His gaze flashes to her hand where it grips the sleeve of his arm even tighter, her grasp near painful if not for the depth of connection it means to him. Then his eyes jump back to his own hands, hands that are different now, because they’ve held her. Her hair, yes, but Ben remembers more, finally allowing himself to acknowledge the touches they’ve shared without even moving. And more, under the weight of her doubt and need, he finally frees himself to try again. 

It is then that she gasps aloud, and were Ben not completely focused on her, he would be concerned at whether or not she was heard. Now, however, he won’t look to check, not when he can feel the warmth of her skin beneath his own. He looks down to his hands, disbelieving that they haven’t moved from where they rest on his legs. Yet he feels them, wrapped around hers. 

Rey’s hand responds to his phantom touches, letting itself be curled in his. A smile pulls at her lips, and he wants to kiss them. But he can’t: not here or now, but with the revelation of his hand on her, he can hope for it someday. Ben’s fingers twitch on his leg as his mind wraps his warmth around her hands, letting her feel his callouses and brushing over hers in turn. Both their hands are dry and rough, but she moves with him as one of them shifts, and in whatever space they’re both sharing their minds and their bodies, he’s holding her face instead. 

His thumb brushes her cheekbone, and he wonders why he waited so long to reach for it. Warmth swirls under her skin, and under his as well. Without his bidding, his eyes close as he edges on losing himself. _We’re safe_, he tells her, _we’re going to be safe_. Every ghosting press of his hands tells her that, and he tells himself the same, because of what Snoke has promised him. 

Then the car comes to a stop, the wind around them halting in a standstill that leaves their bodies at the mercy of the sun. Ben can feel the moment Rey’s smile disappears, the muscles under his palm letting go as reality once again seeps into their awareness. Car doors open and shut, then Ben’s eyes open once more to discover the shift their bodies had made to face each other. His mind registers the building behind her, the guards emerging with a calm and steady pace from its shaded maw, stepping into the blazing rays of sun. The dust is still settling where the car’s tires had come to the halt, and he hears the grind of dirt under heel as Admiral Pryde opens Rey’s door, his dark figure merely a shadow behind her in Ben’s eye. His mind has lost its hold on her; the warmth he felt beneath his fingers fades away. Her thoughts, though, are still shared: a single, quiet question. 

_ What if Snoke is not the man you think he is?  _

“Enough.” The intolerant disdain in Admiral Pryde’s command reaches him through the din. Whether it’s to them or someone else doesn’t matter, because then there's a soft click. It’s so quiet his ears barely hear it, but the years he has in experience name its source. As the resounding doubt in Rey’s thoughts settles over him, resonating through his skull like a bell, he doesn’t need his eyes to see that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. In her blindness she’d seen it all, while he had let his blind faith persuade him otherwise. Now she pays the price, the sun-hot barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her head. “I said that’s enough.” 

  
  


Ben’s head snaps up to Admiral Pryde as the man wrenches Rey from the car, her legs scrambling briefly to stay upright. The bones of her wrist are wrapped in the man’s weathered hand, and though she knows it’s futile, she strains against it. 

He trains his eyes on Pryde, narrowed in silent obedience. Stepping from the car, Ben moves under their soundless exchange. On the car door there are warped indentations where his hands had been, the metal and fiberglass breaking under his grip. “This isn’t what was agreed on.” 

The Admiral smirks at his retort, while different pairs of hands seize Ben’s shoulders and arms behind him. They’re not stronger than him, but under the weight of the gun to Rey’s head, he doesn’t resist. The blindfold still shields her eyes, but her every muscle is taut as she watches his thoughts and through them the movements of those around him. In seconds, chains shackle his wrists, though hers are still only bound by the Admiral’s grip. Then the butt of a soldier’s rifle collides with Ben’s stomach, unprovoked, and she finally tears away. 

“Don’t hurt him,” she snarls, sudden strength surging in her shoulders as her fear and rage twine within her. She throws her body into wrestling herself from Pryde’s grasp, and the dig of a gun barrel into her head doesn't subdue her efforts. Ben flinches towards her, afraid these reckless seconds could be her last moments alive, but the force of the blows that hit him redoubles. Someone caps his knee with a heavy boot and Ben falls. Dust and gravel are kicked up into his eyes, but he never lets his head turn from her. 

A different soldier presses a syringe of clear liquid into the back of his neck; it is two minutes until the effects occur and darkness overtakes him, two minutes in which he steadily falters to get to Rey. Her blindfold has been torn from her eyes now, the black loop hanging loosely from her neck. A gush of red enters his vision from her direction; and he near screams. If they had spilled a drop of her blood they would pay. But it isn’t hers; the admiral’s nose had merely been broken by the shattering force of her elbow. He could smile to behold her, her fiery blaze and furious motions a blur. Too soon, though, the darkness encroaches and he succumbs to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Snoke is a bastard. I think he's the kind of man that wouldn't let Ben get away with speaking up to him, so I wrote this dialogue with Snoke's true relationship to Ben in mind. While I haven't particularly emphasized Ben's relationship with Snoke, he feels himself part of a system that deems him strategically valuable, but personally worthless. This next chapter will be for disassembling that and letting Rey build him back up.This will get better soon, though. I hope the story still holds some interest and if you liked it your feedback's always loved! Stay well and do enjoy <3


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